George Baker (baritone)

right|thumb|George Baker

George Baker (10 February 1885 – 8 January 1976) was an English singer. He is remembered for singing on thousands of gramophone records in a career that spanned 53 years, beginning in 1909. He is especially associated with the comic baritone roles in recordings of the Gilbert & Sullivan operas. Baker made his stage debut in 1915 and toured during the 1920s.

Early life and career

300px|thumb|Baker (standing 2nd from right) with [[George W. Byng (standing at far left) at a recording session for The Pirates of Penzance in 1920]]

Baker was born in Birkenhead, the son of Walter Baker and his wife, Elizabeth, née Sanders. He studied violin, flute and piano as a child. At the age of 16, he served as organist and choirmaster at the Woodford Parish Church in Cheshire. He did the same at two churches in Birkenhead between 1903 and 1906. Baker studied singing with John Acton and won a scholarship to the Royal College of Music. There he studied with Gustave Garcia and was awarded a Patron Funds Grant to continue his vocal studies in Milan in 1914. He was married three times: first to the pianist/conductor Grace Lilian Bryant (1871–1955), from 1911 until their divorce in 1922, then to the singer Kathlyn Hilliard, who died in 1933, and last to Olive Groves, another singer and teacher, who died in 1974. His son with Hilliard, George Alan Hill Baker, was born in 1925 and died during the Second World War.

Baker first recorded for Pathé Records in 1909, while still a student; the piano accompanist and conductor (on his orchestrally-accompanied Pathé discs) was his future wife Lilian Bryant, musical director for Pathé's London studios. Pathé had just changed its emphasis from cylinders to vertically-cut disc records. After his Pathé debut, in the early 1910s Baker began making lateral-cut records for the Gramophone Company and other labels.

In many of Baker's early recordings, he was credited under pseudonyms such as George Portland, Arthur George, Victor Conway, Victor Norbury, Lelie Milton, George Barnes, Walter Duncan and Walter Jeffries. In a 1934 article in The Gramophone, Baker explained that in the early 1900s recording companies had limited options for singers suited to the primitive recording techniques, and so "to give a semblance of variety to their catalogues" they issued recordings of each singer under a number of pseudonyms. During 1927 and 1928, he toured in the United States and Canada as Macheath in The Beggar's Opera, making his New York debut in March 1928.

Later years

In later years, Baker rarely appeared on stage (except the concert stage), and he only appeared professionally on stage in one Gilbert and Sullivan opera, at the Royal Festival Hall in a performance of Trial by Jury, when he was 81 years old. and wrote about singing in the collection A Career in Music (1950), edited by Robert Elkin. He also appeared as a music critic and writer in English newspapers.

He retired to Herefordshire in his final years and died in Hereford on 8 January 1976 at the age of 90.

Gilbert and Sullivan recordings

Baker made the following G&S recordings with HMV: 1917 The Mikado (Ko-Ko, Pish-Tush (part), and Pooh-Bah (part)), 1919 The Gondoliers (Antonio, Don Alhambra (part), Duke of Plaza-Toro and Giuseppe); 1920 The Yeomen of the Guard (Jack Point and Sergeant Meryll (part)); 1920 The Pirates of Penzance (Major-General Stanley); 1921 Patience (Bunthorne and Major); and 1922 Iolanthe (Lord Chancellor).

From 1924 to 1933, he made the following recordings with D'Oyly Carte: 1924 Ruddigore (Robin Oakapple); 1927 Gondoliers (Giuseppe); 1926 Mikado (Pish-Tush); 1927 Trial (Usher); 1929 Pirates (Major-General) 1928 Yeomen (Jack Point); 1929 Iolanthe (Lord Chancellor); 1930 Patience (Bunthorne); 1930 H.M.S. Pinafore (Captain Corcoran); 1931 Gondoliers (Duke of Plaza-Toro); 1931 Pirates (Major-General); 1931 Ruddigore (Robin Oakapple) 1931 Yeomen (Jack Point); 1932 Princess Ida (Florian); and 1933 The Sorcerer (John Wellington Wells).

With Columbia, in 1931, Baker recorded Gondoliers (Don Alhambra and Giuseppe (part)); Yeomen (Sergeant Meryll and Wilfred Shadbolt); and Iolanthe (Lord Chancellor). On the Sir Malcolm Sargent/Glyndebourne series, he recorded: 1958 Pinafore (Sir Joseph Porter); 1959 Iolanthe (Lord Chancellor); 1961 Pirates (Major-General); 1961 Trial (The Learned Judge); 1963 Patience (Bunthorne); and 1963 Ruddigore (Robin Oakapple).

For the BBC, Baker recorded: 1966 Trial (Judge) and 1966 Ida (King Gama). He is also heard on a 1970 recording compiling many of his early recordings, called A Tribute to George Baker: Vintage Compilation. In 1973, for an LP set, The Art of the Savoyard, Baker recorded his reminiscences of Richard Temple, Henry Lytton, Bertha Lewis, C. H. Workman, Walter Passmore and other original Savoyards.(Pearl LP set GEM 118/120)

Notes

References

External links

Articles by and about Baker