Clint Baker will be leading our West Coast Marching Band this year, plus playing sets with Big Mama Sue & Fast Eddie. He may also appear on other special sets on bass or tuba. The following accolades give you a sense of this still-young musician’s contributions to the world of traditional jazz. We are delighted that Clint be at this year’s festival.

"Clint Baker, who plays New Orleans classic and revivalist jazz, is skilled not only on cornet but on trombone, alto sax, guitar, banjo, bass, tuba, and drums! On cornet his style tends to be primitive, influenced to an extent by Bunk Johnson and Kid Thomas Valentine. Baker credits Jim Borkenhagen with teaching him how to play New Orleans style, and he was encouraged along the way by Leon Oakley and Percy Humphrey. Referring to himself modestly as "a craftsman of music," Clint Baker is proudest of his ability to teach students about traditional jazz."

–from "Trumpet Kings (The Players Who Shaped The Sound Of The Jazz Trumpet)" by Scott Yanow

"I met (Clint) at a music party sometime in the summer of 1989, and at 17, he was a kind of boy-wonder of vintage jazz. All of us (at the time) thirtysomethings were very impressed by him and his talent and knowledge in the field of vintage jazz, and continued to be as we saw him draw an inner circle of then-teenage disciples, work with them when we subbed in with Bill Armstrong's Churchill Street Jazz Band (where I got my start as a teenager myself), and then saw them go on to bigger and better things. I remember Robert Barics played with Wynton Marsalis for a while, and Clint started his own band, implementing his take on the New Orleans genesis of Jazz, and become active on the festival circuit.

"As one looks at the tapestry of Traditional Jazz, and the networks of people who form the different generations, Clint should be seen as an important link to his generation. Probably the fourth generation.

"The first would be the pioneers: from Buddy Bolden to Armstrong, Oliver, ODJB, Morton, Morgan, NORK and Beiderbecke. The second would be Lu Watters and Turk Murphy on the West Coast, and Eddie Condon and fellow travelers on the East Coast, many of whom were first-generation veterans, all playing some kind of Dixieland around 1940 or so. The third would be those born around then, from say Leon Oakley, to the guys my age who have been the festival bands in the last 20-30 years. Many of us baby-boomers. Clint is a generation X'er, and he is an important link to the fourth generation. Wynton Marsalis is I think technically a baby-boomer, but really I would put him in with Clint's generation.

"What I think is the current shape of things now versus circa 1980, and that I first noticed with Clint locally and Marsalis nationally, is they have always had a boldness to unapologetically play this old music. If they say it's cool, it's cool.

–Paul Price, Leader of Paul Price's Society Orchestra

Visit Clint Baker's web site, clintbakerjazz.com.