Legendary R&B siren Anita Baker will hold her final performance at Little Caesar’s Arena tonight. In honor of her significant contributions to the music industry, we reflect on her iconic career.
Influenced by jazz singers Ella Fitzgerald and Sarah Vaughan, Baker gravitated to music from an early age. Singing in her church‘s gospel choir in Detroit, she cultivated and refined her love of music and her powerful and emotional three-octave voice.
Listen to five essential tracks by Anita Baker
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1. “I Just Wanna Be Your Girl”
After being invited to audition for the R&B collective, Chapter 8 – who were the backup band for the Detroit Emeralds – Baker would join the group to become its lead singer on its self-titled 1979 debut album released on Ariola Records. To see also : Music is key to turning consumers ’good intentions into real purchases in ethical and sustainable markets: high-pace music can help bridge the gap between words and actions, new research suggests.. Its track “I Just Wanna Be Your Girl” puts her vocals front and center, giving a small glimpse into Baker’s talent and what’s to come next.
However, Ariola Records was bought by Arista Records, who decided to drop Chapter 8 because they felt that Baker’s song and persona lacked star quality. Discouraged, Baker would leave the music business for a time and work in a Detroit law office. Then, in 1983, she was contacted by an old colleague from Chapter 8 and asked to record an album for the Beverly Glen record label. Production quickly ensued on what would become Baker’s debut album, “The Songstress,” a perfect title that cast her as a highly capable melodist with a velvety voice who was a master at crafting the art of the bona fide slow jam. This is no more evident than on the track “Angel” from the release.
2. “Angel”
The release went against the trends of the African-American scene of the time that was filled with cheesy synthesizers, dance divas and rappers. Instead, Baker opted for a more soulful sound combined with shades of jazz and heartfelt balladry that cultivated a grown-up and sexy adult contemporary vibe in her music. This may interest you : OH MY GOD! The Outdoor Music Guide Is Now Available | City of Madison. If “The Songstress” was the appetizer, her next album “Rapture” would be the main course. Listeners wanted more of Baker’s voice and on her sophomore release, they would hear the full extent and glory of her vocal abilities — unapologetically.
3. “Caught Up In the Rapture”
One of the signature cuts from the 1986 release is “Caught Up In the Rapture”. The album would be her masterpiece, musical lightning in a bottle, garnering two Grammy wins for Best R&B Female Vocalist and Best R&B Song. There were other significant milestones associated with this groundbreaking release. Firstly, Baker named himself Executive Producer of the album and as such there was a seamless quality to the material where each song is a beautifully personal tone poem. This may interest you : That sense of synchronization: how Stranger Things overcame the music industry. Baker called the sound architecture of the material “fiery love songs with jazz undertones.” Her quest for control over her own material would be a key theme that would manifest itself to a greater extent later.
Second, due to the release, Baker became the face of the Quiet Storm movement, a Black radio subgenre style that was pioneered by artists such as Smokey Robinson, the Isley Brothers and others in the 1970s who fostered the intimate textures of soulful slow jams into a slow atmosphere of romantic undertones between melodic grooves. Baker took this level of sophisticated soul and placed it on even higher ground with his warm and tender tributes to the endurance of love and happiness. Her songs would become timeless music cults.
And thirdly, Baker’s voice took on transcendent qualities, her rich contralto sounding far older than her years, delivered with the utmost precision and conviction while enveloping listeners in its symphonic textures that flooded every sense.
Soul music was at a crossroads by the time “Rap” dropped in 1986. Much of the genre was aimed at the pop dance scene – alas Whitney Houston – or had become somewhat formulaic as typified by the popular machine-driven productions of Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis. “Rap” reestablished the genre and reaffirmed the case for soul music being an authentic medium, a creative space where diverse and varied sounds such as jazz, R&B and adult contemporary could simultaneously exist in the same dreamscape. It was timeless and nostalgic, but also forward-thinking and pointed to a future direction for R&B.
The album resonated in both the underground and mainstream and would set Baker up to having a long-lasting, multi-platinum career. Her next album, “Giving You the Best That I Got,” would continue her trajectory as a purveyor of sophisticated soul.
4. “Giving You the Best That I Got”
That album won Baker three more Grammy awards and cemented her stardom. Two years later, Baker released an album entitled “Compositions”, followed by “Rhythm of Love” in 1994, both albums resting on the soul charts with a musical mix of jazz, soul and adult contemporary. Baker would take some time to devote to family, raising two sons and focusing on their personal growth and development. She later reappeared in 2004 with an agreement with Blue Note Records and published “My Everything”, an album that would reach the top of the pop and soul charts.
Baker’s music resume is one most artists would kill for – eight Grammy Awards, four American Music Awards and a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame are just the tip of the iceberg. But her legacy also includes music activism in recent years. Baker, like many artists at the start of her career, were victims of poor artist contracts that prevented them from owning their own material. However, Baker was able to use a reversal in copyright law and declared that she had “outlived” all her artist contracts and, by law, her masters plus the rights to her name and likeness should be returned to her. The reversal allowed artists to receive their copyrights after 35 years.
But with her not being granted those copyrights, the veteran songstress took her battle public, during which time she urged fans not to stream her music until she was the sole owner of her catalog. Her stance galvanized music artists as many came in support of her and spurred others to have the courage to fight for their own masters and copyrights. Baker was triumphant with a recent announcement that she had regained her masters.
5. “Fairy Tales”
Anita Baker’s impact on music continues to evolve as new generations of music lovers discover her work. She brought a sense of class to the industry that you would see with jazz artists like Ella Fitzgerald, Nancy Wilson and Sarah Vaughan, bringing the genre to the mainstream with a sophistication grounded in tradition-oriented soul and R&B with future trends. . She is a wonderful, deeply intuitive personality, a peerless model of soul, whose music is equally transcendent and timeless. And that’s pretty good for an artist whose record label told her during her Chapter 8 days that she didn’t have star quality.
Photo courtesy of Ben Houdijk Photography.
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Chris Campbell has a deep interest in curating Detroit’s rich music scene and presenting it to the world.
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