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Anita Baker

Anita Baker is a sophisticated jazz vocalist with a string of hits from the late 1980s and early 1990s. A six time Grammy winner, in 1994, with success assured, Baker cut back her activities to focus on home and motherhood, in the process revealing something of the intense difficulties she faced during her own youth. Then, after a ten year hiatus from the business, she made a triumphal return with a new album that met with critical acclaim.

She was born on January 26, 1958, in Toledo, Ohio, and grew up in Detroit's inner city. Her birth mother, who was only 16 when Anita was born, abandoned her, leaving her in the care of a woman who has been variously described as a friend and as a relative; this woman, Mary Lewis, became her foster mother. When Anita was 13, her foster mother died, and an older sister in her adoptive family told her the truth about her past. This older adoptive sister, Lois Landry, raised Anita.

Baker's foster family provided her with a stable environment that emphasized hard work and religion; she joined a church choir and identified with the deep voice of gospel singer Mahalia Jackson. She began to sing secular music with her friends as well, and was performing in Detroit clubs by the time she was 16. Baker attended a community college briefly, but a strong drive toward musical performance asserted itself, and she dropped out of school to front a funk ensemble called Chapter 8, whose bass player had heard her perform in an East Side nightclub.

Chapter 8 toured widely and landed a contract with Los Angeles-based Ariola Records. They had a minor hit with "I Just Want to Be Your Girl" in 1980, but disbanded after being dropped from the label, which was itself in dire financial straits.

In 1982 Baker was signed by an independent label called Beverly Glen. Her first solo album, ”The Songstress,” was released in 1983. The album attracted wide industry attention, yielded two R&B hit singles ("Angel" and the gospel-drenched "No More Tears," which did indeed bring to mind the voice of Mahalia Jackson), and sold a respectable 300,000 copies. But Baker, still naïve in the ways of the music business, received no royalties from the album and parted ways acrimoniously with Beverly Glen, a much-needed follow-up album still unreleased.

Baker signed with Elektra and threw herself wholeheartedly into her next project, the album “Rapture,” released in 1986. Baker supervised every aspect of the record's production. Filling the role of executive producer herself, Baker chose “Songstress” collaborator Michael Powell as producer, and the two painstakingly selected songs that fit Baker's smooth, ultra-romantic, jazz- inflected vocal style. They succeeded brilliantly. The album yielded two massive hit singles in both R&B and pop tabulations, "Sweet Love" and "You Bring Me Joy." The singer was rewarded with two Grammy awards in 1987, and by the end of 1988 “Rapture” had racked up sales of over five million units.

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Album Review

Anita Baker: The Best of Anita Baker

Read "The Best of Anita Baker" reviewed by Daniel Garrett


On The Best of Anita Baker, the singer goes from singing that “love like ours is heaven sent, each day a day to remember” in the song “Angel” to singing “you should have heard the way he shouted and the way that I screamed” in “I Apologize,” a movement from a romanticism that is positively adolescent to a mature realism. Baker, a singer whose tones suggest the melding of jazz, gospel, and the calmer speech-song of popular music singing, is ...

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Music Industry

Singer Anita Baker Avoids Jail in Royalty Dispute

Singer Anita Baker Avoids Jail in Royalty Dispute

Source: All About Jazz

Grammy-winning singer Anita Baker reaches deal in music royalty dispute, avoids jail

Anita Baker and her attorneys have worked out an agreement that will help determine how much the Grammy-winning singer's ex-husband is owed in music royalties as part of a divorce settlement. Baker was ordered to a Detroit court Friday after the 52-year-old R&B singer missed a deadline Wednesday to sign related documents and declined again to sign them Thursday. The judge threatened to jail Baker if she didn't ...

172

Education

Anita Baker, Ron Carter, And Kevin Eubanks Honored At 2005 Berklee College Of Music Commencement

Anita Baker, Ron Carter, And Kevin Eubanks Honored At 2005 Berklee College Of Music Commencement

Source: All About Jazz

Students perform exciting pre-commencement concert tribute to honorees; Guitarist Bryan Baker awarded Billboard Magazine Endowed Scholarship Seven hundred graduates received degrees today at Berklee College of Music's 2005 Commencement, held at Northeastern University’s Matthews Arena, in Boston. Honorary Doctor of Music Degrees were presented by Berklee President Roger Brown to Grammy-winning R&B vocalist Anita Baker, legendary jazz bassist Ron Carter, and Kevin Eubanks, a Berklee alumnus and music director of the Tonight Show Band. In front of more than 4,000 ...

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Music Industry

Anita Baker, Kevin Eubanks, Ron Carter Will Get Music Degrees

Anita Baker, Kevin Eubanks, Ron Carter Will Get Music Degrees

Source: All About Jazz

BOSTON, MA, April 20, 2005 – Grammy-winning R&B vocalist Anita Baker, legendary jazz bassist Ron Carter, and Kevin Eubanks, music director of Jay Leno’s Tonight Show Band, will receive Honorary Doctor of Music degrees at Berklee College of Music’s Commencement on Saturday, May 7, 10:00 a.m. at Northeastern University’s Matthews Arena. Commencement speaker Ron Carter will address approximately 700 graduates and their invited guests at the 5,000-seat venue. This year’s Honorary Doctorate recipients - Baker, Carter, and Eubanks - are ...

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Music Industry

Blue Note Records Signs Anita Baker

Blue Note Records Signs Anita Baker

Source: All About Jazz


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