Ernest Baker (May 30, 1939 – March 5, 2000) – The Soul Stroke (Can You Handle It) (1970)

This upbeat soul/funk bomb was recorded by the singer known as King Ernest whose wild stage presence was legendary.

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Ernest Baker was a soul singer who began his recording career in the mid-sixties, billed as King Ernest. He released a string of singles over the next decade on small labels but never broke through to wider fame.

Born into a musical family in Natchez, Mississippi, and raised in Vidalia, Louisiana, Baker was the third of eleven brothers and sisters. His great-grandfather was an Italian violinist, and all his children born in the States became violinists or guitarists. His grandfather was part of a traveling revue that played all over Mississippi and Louisiana, and his father was a guitarist who performed throughout the South. One of Baker’s older cousins was the great R&B singer Bobby “Blue” Bland.

After excelling in high school, Baker went to college in Chicago, and it was there that his brother-in-law convinced him to sing professionally. His first paid date was in 1958. He played around Chicago during the late fifties and early sixties, at one point filling in for Tyrone Davis when he had to leave town on short notice. By the time he returned, Baker had taken over the gig.

His stage show was legendary, and when he left Chicago for New York in 1964 he got a new nickname, as Baker explained in a 1997 interview:

“Those guys on the road, they started saying, 'King,' calling me King. I was doing R&B, soul. They called me the King because I was so wild, you know, really wild. I mean James Brown. They said I could dance faster than him, you know, the leg movements and jumpin' off stages…And so Hy Weiss, the president of Old Town Records back during that time, said, 'Well, let's just call him King Ernest then.”

After arriving in New York, Baker began performing around town, where he helped out a young Wilson Pickett. As he recalled in 1997:

“I was working some of those clubs in North Newark, like Marsha's Lounge and Bernard's Place. That's where I met Wilson Pickett in 1964, before he started getting really big. He and I were down in North Newark at this place, and he asked to come sit in with me and my little group, 'cause we had the house packed. I used to dress with all the hair and different shiny suits and sparkles -- that's the way I looked back in the day. The women used to call me 'pretty Ernest.' Wilson said he wanted to come up on stage and sing with me. I said, 'Come on, man.' That little man got up there and sung.”

In 1965, Baker recorded his debut single “I Feel Alright” for Weiss’ Barry Records subsidiary, with the heartfelt “Hold It Baby” on the B-side. Both songs were written by his manager, Jimmy Petersen. Promo copies were issued, but the single was never officially released and today sells for upwards of $100 on Discogs.

He followed it up in 1966 with another single written by Petersen, this time for Roulette Records and billed as Candy Man and the Candy Bars feat. King Ernest and Yvonne (Petersen), his manager’s wife. The rockin’ jam “Voodoo Man” was backed with the girl group ballad “By My Guy.” But again, only promo copies were released.

Eventually Baker returned to Chicago, where in 1970 he recorded the upbeat soul/funk bomb “The Soul Stroke (Can You Handle It).” Co-written and produced by Edward Cody, Nat Meadows, and Rich Semerak, it was released on Sonic Records, the in-house label for Odyssey Sound Studio.

Its B-side was the superb jam “You Gonna Miss Me.” Original copies today sell for $350 on average on Discogs.

Around this same time, he and producer Nat Meadows co-wrote and recorded the funky jam “Somebody Somewhere (Is Playing With Yours).” It was arranged and conducted by the great Syl Johnson’s backing band the Pieces of Peace and released on Funk Records circa 1970-71.

In 1975, Baker recorded a single for the Chicago label Blue Soul, with the stellar funky jam “Do It, With The Feeling (Pt. 1)” on the A-side and the heartfelt loneliness anthem “Alone Again” on the flip. Both sides were co-produced by Meadows and Edward Cody.

Baker moved to Los Angeles at the end of the seventies after he was promised a record deal. It never came through, which led to his leaving the music industry for the next fifteen years. He had a late career comeback in the mid-nineties, and released his first full-length album King Of Hearts in 1997. He had just finished recording another (posthumously released as Blues Got Soul) when he died in a car crash.

Happy 85th Heavenly Birthday to King Ernest Baker.

Further info:

“King Ernest swings out of retirement to rejoin the blues game,” Los Angeles Times, February 6, 1997.

“The Second Time Around: An Interview with ‘King Ernest’ Baker,” by Scott Dirks, Blues Access, 1997.

#soul #funk #Chicago #ErnestBaker