George Baker (record singer)
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- This article refers to the record singer. For other people with the same name, see 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 the early decades of the 20th century. He is especially associated with the comic baritone roles in recordings of the Gilbert & Sullivan operas.
[edit] Life and Career
George Baker, also known as George Portland (and other recording pseudonyms), was born in Birkenhead. At the age of 16, he became organist and choirmaster at the Woodford Parish Church in Cheshire, and between 1903 and 1906 he served in a similar capacity at two churches in Birkenhead. He then attended the Royal College of Music. He also studied singing in Milan in 1914. He was married twice: first to singer Kathlyn Hilliard, who died in 1933, and then to Olive Groves, another singer, who died in 1974.
Baker first recorded for Pathé Records in 1909. The change from cylinders to gramophone discs had just been made, and Baker was one of the earliest singers recorded on the new medium. He described the experience as follows:
- We worked really hard in those days, for one song had to be sung perfectly at least six times. The records thus made would be played back again and further records made from them. The conditions under which we recorded were crude in the extreme. We sang in a tiny bare room and into a big tin trumpet, which was connected direct to the recording needle by a rubber tube. We sang collarless and in shirt sleeves, for the place quickly grew stifling. When electrical recording came in, this was all changed, and we now sing into microphones in beautiful rooms, not unlike broadcasting studios.[1]
Baker recorded roles in the first English recordings of Wagner's Parsifal, Coleridge-Taylor's Hiawatha, Strauss's Salome and Beethoven's Choral Symphony. He recorded in a wide range of repertory, including as "Uncle George" in a popular early series of children's recordings.
In the 1920s, Baker performed with both the Carl Rosa and British National Opera companies. In later years, however, he rarely appeared on 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. Baker was never a member of the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company, but he recorded many of the Gilbert and Sullivan operas with that company and was known for his excellent diction. He sang in the first complete recording of The Mikado (1917) and subsequently recorded a role (and sometimes more than one role) in nearly all of the G&S operas, some of them several times, into the 1960s.
Baker was the BBC's Overseas Music Director from 1944 to 1947, and for thirty years he served the Royal Philharmonic Society as committee member, treasurer and chairman. He was also the long-standing Honorary Secretary, and a trustee, of the Savage Club (which counted among its notable members W. S. Gilbert and George Grossmith). In addition, he served as Secretary of the Orchestral Employers' Association and as a member of the committee of the Musicians' Benevolent Fund.
[edit] 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 (music)). He is also heard on a 1970 recording called A Tribute to George Baker: Vintage Compilation (HQM1200). 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)
