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About Bobby Baker, MD, Board Certified Psychiatrist:
Dr. Baker learned how to read music before learning how to read words from his older brother Eddie Baker, the pianist/composer/arranger/educator, who worked with many musicians, including Miles Davis and Billie Holiday. Bobby Baker began studying clarinet at age twelve with jazz saxophonists Joe Daley and Sandy Mosse in Chicago.
By his senior year, he was the first-chair clarinetist in the high school orchestra and band. He studied clarinet with Jerome Stowell of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. He also started playing flute in his senior year of high school, and started improvising jazz during college at the University of Wisconsin (Madison). He picked up the alto saxophone during his senior year of college and worked professional gigs with a group called Sebastian Moon.
He played at the Whiskey A Go Go in L.A. for three weeks when he was a member of the rock group Baby Huey and the Babysitters. At one point he moved to Paris to follow the avant-garde jazz scene, where he practiced and performed with Steve Lacy.
His love of music continued while in medical school at the University of Illinois, Chicago, during which time he had a group called Myoho featuring the late great bassist Fred Hopkins. He also played a gig with his brother Eddie Baker, Sonny Stitt and Steve McCall, and had some mentoring with George Coleman, Freddie Hubbard and James Spaulding. To this day he juggles his professional medical practice with his musical interests, sitting in with musicians in the Chicago area.
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