There aren’t a lot of street performers in the Coachella Valley, especially during the months when it is scorchingly hot outside, but buskers—people who perform in public, often for donations—are given the spotlight in Palm Desert resident Cary Baker’s new book, Down on the Corner: Adventures in Busking and Street Music.
Through 38 chapters, Baker explores historic busking scenes and notable street performers through interviews and Baker’s own experiences during a lifetime of music appreciation and a career in the music industry. During a recent phone interview, Baker explained how his love of street performers began with an enchanting encounter when his father took him to Maxwell Street in Chicago in 1971.
“The first thing I hear is slide guitar, and I think, ‘Wow, cool,’ so I cross the street and get a little closer, and there’s this blind street singer,” Baker said. “It turns out his name is Arvella Gray, and I reference him in the book. We just sat and watched him for an hour, and then we walked around some more, and there were other street singers. I think my father was exasperated with all the time I wanted to spend watching these street singers, but I was fascinated. … I got to know Blind Arvella Gray. There was an alt-weekly newspaper starting up in Chicago called the Reader, and I sent them, on spec, a typed-up little interview with this street singer. I was only about 16 years old, and that started me and my life of crime in music journalism, and eventually representing music to the press when I did record-company publicity.”
After a 40-year career in the music business, Baker retired a few years ago, giving him time to explore longform projects.
“I decided I didn’t want to do publicity anymore, but I wanted to spend some years writing books,” Baker said. “My wife and I found a house in Palm Desert, and we moved from L.A. Just to have a sense of purpose and something to do, I decided I wanted to write my book that I’d long threatened to write. I was going to write a book about the music of the California desert. … I called a confidant in Joshua Tree, and he said, ‘Sounds like a great book; have you seen the book called Songs of Joshua Tree?’ I ordered it from Amazon, and that book’s already been written, so I called my publisher and said, ‘I don’t think I can write about the California desert.’”
Baker turned to his many memories of street performers, and decided a busking-related book would be a good idea.
“I ended up on the phone with the manager of Ted Hawkins, who was a street singer, a busker from the Venice boardwalk in L.A.,” Baker said. “I remember when I first moved to L.A. in the ’80s, walking down the Venice boardwalk as everybody does when you first move to L.A., and there was Ted Hawkins singing like Otis Redding and playing guitar. I called this publisher and said, ‘What about a biography of Ted Hawkins?’ The publisher said, ‘I’m not sure who Ted Hawkins is.’ I said, ‘Well, Ted Hawkins was a busker, a street singer,’ and the publisher said, ‘Well, how about a book about buskers, plural, and street singers, plural?’”
Hawkins is one of the many artists featured in Down on the Corner. The book spans more than 100 years of busking history, from Blind Lemon Jefferson to Elvis Costello.
“I have a lot of chapters on old blues artists, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Rev. Gary Davis, and an artist from Nashville—a street singer named Cortelia Clark,” Baker said. “There was the classical composer Moondog, who used to play and perform in midtown Manhattan. I wasn’t able to interview him, obviously, although I had met him once. I had to go for some secondary materials on him and a few other artists. If I couldn’t get the artist—like I couldn’t get through to Elvis Costello—I found somebody who witnessed Elvis Costello busking before he was signed to Columbia, and then the guy who heard him busking and signed him to Columbia. That made for a chapter, and I did a chapter on Wild Man Fischer, who was a lunatic, maybe mentally ill, but he was a busker who Frank Zappa signed in the late ’60s. I found some eyewitnesses among my L.A. peer group who had seen him perform and knew him and had some good, colorful memories.”
Baker had a number of interviews and materials he’d collected from decades of music journalism, but he also completed about 100 new interviews throughout 2023.
“Before you know it, I had about 38 chapters on various street singers,” he said. “Some of the chapters were on regions, like I did a chapter on Washington Square in New York, which was where a lot of folk singers used to play in the park in Greenwich Village. Obviously Maxwell Street is a region, and I did that. I did a chapter on the Venice boardwalk. … I did three chapters on New Orleans. New Orleans was a particularly colorful street-singing scene from Louis Armstrong to people in the present day, plus some advocates for buskers. I found a lawyer who represented buskers and got local ordinances changed so the buskers could play.”
As he worked on the book, Baker ended up changing publishers.
“It was going to be an academic publisher, and instead, I had a literary rep representing me, and he got me into Jawbone Press, which was a dream come true, because they had books on Kathy Valentine of the Go-Go’s, Cheap Trick, Neil Finn of Crowded House, Dan Hicks and his Hot Licks, and Tom Werman, the producer,” he said.
Although Baker explored a multitude of genres and popular acts throughout his career as a publicist and journalist, he always held a soft spot in his heart for the authentic beauty of street singers.
“I was really into a colorful image of street singers, once I learned that they existed. Being a middle-class, suburban white kid, it was so different from what I grew up with,” he said. “I was just fascinated with it, and then being taken to Maxwell Street at age 16 … I just found this really fascinating.”
Baker’s book explores how, in some cases, busking has helped revive music careers.
“A three-time Grammy Award-winning artist named Fantastic Negrito was a busker … and prior to busking, he had a whole different name and a whole different style of music,” Baker said. “He was signed as a hip-hop artist to Interscope, just like Dr. Dre or Snoop or Eminem or Nine Inch Nails. His record completely stiffed, and he got kicked off of Interscope, and he went back to his native Oakland and found himself out on the streets busking, and so that was like a second act for him. Through busking, he decided that he really wasn’t a hip hop guy; he was a blues guy. … He’s another example of a guy who, from his street singing, found his style of music, and that’s when he found success.”
Baker said he has only seen one busker in the Palm Springs area—but wherever he is in the world, he will always stop, listen and support a busker.
“One day I was in downtown Palm Springs, and I saw an older man by the Starbucks there at Tahquitz and Palm Canyon playing an accordion, performing ‘Lady of Spain,’ he said. “It’s not my thing, but I will put a dollar or two in any busker’s tin cup or QR code or guitar case. I definitely supported him. I was just grateful to see somebody playing outdoors in Palm Springs.”
For more information, visit www.carybaker.com/books.
Edited to correct a name on Dec. 18.
