George Baker (record Singer) - Early Life and Career

Early Life and Career

George Baker, also known as George Portland (and other recording pseudonyms), was born in Birkenhead, the son of Walter Baker and his wife, Elizabeth, née Sanders. He studied violin, flute and piano as a child. At the age of 16, he served as organist and choirmaster at the Woodford Parish Church in Cheshire. He did the same at two churches in Birkenhead between 1903 and 1906. Baker studied singing with John Acton and won a scholarship to the Royal College of Music. There he studied with Gustave Garcia and was awarded a Patron Funds Grant to continue his vocal studies in Milan in 1914. He was married three times: first to pianist Grace Lilian Bryant on 14 November 1911 (she divorced him in 1922), then to singer Kathlyn Hilliard, who died in 1933, and then to Olive Groves, another singer and teacher, who died in 1974.

Baker first recorded for Pathé Records in 1909, while still a student. The change from cylinders to gramophone discs had just been made, and Baker was one of the earliest singers recorded on the new medium. In 1934 he recalled the experience as follows:

We worked really hard in those days, for one song had to be sung perfectly at least six times. The records thus made would be played back again and further records made from them. The conditions under which we recorded were crude in the extreme. We sang in a tiny bare room and into a big tin trumpet, which was connected direct to the recording needle by a rubber tube. We sang collarless and in shirt sleeves, for the place quickly grew stifling. When electrical recording came in, this was all changed, and we now sing into microphones in beautiful rooms, not unlike broadcasting studios.

Baker recorded roles in the first British recordings of Parsifal by Richard Wagner, Hiawatha by Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, Salome by Richard Strauss and Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. He recorded in a wide range of repertory, including as "Uncle George" in a popular early series of children's recordings, in dance band records, hymns, and in the once popular recording of The Departure of a Troopship.

In 1915 Baker made his stage debut in the revue Now's the Time at the Alhambra Theatre. In the 1920s, he performed with both the Carl Rosa and British National Opera companies. He also toured Australia for J. C. Williamson Ltd. in 1922-23, playing the roles of Lord Harry Coe in the musical revue The Peep Show, the Hon. André d'Aubigny in The Lilac Domino and Blair Farquhar in Sally (musical). During this tour, Baker made several recordings for the Aeolian Company. During 1927 and 1928, he toured in the United States as Macheath in The Beggar's Opera, making his New York debut in March 1928.