Jon Baker (Producer)

Jon Baker is an pop culture impresario. He has worked as a fashion designer, promoter and a music industry executive, and is currently co-owner of Geejam, a luxury resort and recording studio located in San San, near Port Antonio, Jamaica.

Early Life

Baker was born in 1960 to Roy and Maureen Baker. His father was a specialist car dealer and his mother the head designer at Susan Small, a British ready-to-wear fashion firm. There, Mrs. Baker designed dresses for Princess Anne (including her wedding dress) and other notables; she later opened her own very successful couture studio. He is an only child.

Baker enrolled in a foundation course in fashion and photography at the Chelsea School of Art in 1977. It was there that he was introduced to the punk scene. Deeply influenced by punk’s music and fashion (he was a regular at Vivienne Westwood and Malcolm McLaren’s shop Seditionaries, for example, and used to ask Westwood for critques) he immersed himself in its culture. By 1978, Baker combined his artistic and entrepreneurial instincts for the first time and opened ‘’Blooz,’’ a shop in Kensington Market that specialized in punk rock and new wave style t-shirts. By the end of that year, Baker had become part of the burgeoning post-punk new romantic movement, influenced by Chris Sullivan, Boy George, Sade and Spandau Ballet and based largely around the Blitz Club.

Baker left school in late 1978 to open a fashion store called Axiom in the Great Gear Market on King’s Road in London and was a stylist for many of the important new romantic bands (notably Spandau Ballet and Duran Duran). Then, in 1980 Steve Dagger, Spandau’s manager, asked Baker to travel to New York to meet with a group of nightclub owners and promoters. This visit resulted in a fashion show by Axiom designers coupled with a performance by Spandau Ballet at the Underground Club on Union Square Park. The success of this event inspired Baker to relocate to New York.

NYC, 1980-1984

Shortly after Baker arrived he met Ruza Blue, a British expat and music promoter, who brought him to Disco Fever, an important early hip hop club in the Bronx. There, he met the likes of Run DMC and Kurtis Blow, and first became acquainted with hip hop culture. Shortly thereafter, the two started an immensely popular hip hop night at NYC’s Club Negril. When Negril proved too small a venue, the two promoted an important and very popular Friday night hip hop party at The Roxy. Baker worked under Blue, was in charge of promotion and ran the VIP lounge. There, he became part of the downtown scene that included the likes of Keith Haring, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Debi Mazar, Africa Bambaataa, Fab Five Freddy and Madonna.

During this era, Baker also ran Jon Baker Productions, a small booking agency that brought well known club nights from London and Berlin (including the Wag Club, Bat Cave and Berlin Nights, the latter which included a fashion show by Claudia Skoda and a performance by Hong Kong Syndikat) to New York’s Danceteria. In addition, it brought British design collectives to New York and produced fashion shows for nightclubs like Danceteria, the Roxy, the Peppermint Lounge, and The Ritz.

This era also saw Baker help the UK’s Chris Brick open a branch of his DEMOB clothing store in Soho in New York City.

Gee Street Records, 1985-1990

A need for personal stability influenced Baker’s decision to return to London in 1984, although he would travel to NYC shortly thereafter to produce a very successful British Designer showcase at the Palladium with New York based club promoter Steve Lewis; the event included Katharine Hamnett, the design team Crolla, Stephen Jones, Marc Jacobs and others.

1985 was a pivotal year. Because Baker’s earlier engagement with the NYC underground hip hop scene led to connections with young music industry entrepreneurs like Tom Silverman of Tommy Boy Records and Adam Levy of Warlock Records, he was a natural choice to organize Doug E. Fresh and Slick Rick’s first UK tour. This experience led him to take on a prominent role as a promoter of hip hop in the UK.

In addition, that year Baker met future wife Ziggi Golding, an agent who ran the very progressive “Z” modeling agency and represented young, upcoming photographers like Juergen Teller and Stéphane Sednaoui. He also met the UK hip hop pioneer DJ Richie Rich (Kiss_100_London|Richard Morgan) and Rob Birch and Nick Hallam of the Stereo MCs. Together, they began to produce and distribute white label records to London dance shops. It was around this time that Baker and Golding acquired a small warehouse on Gee Street in London and established a small production company they called Gee Street Records. By the end of the decade it had become one of the pre-eminent independent hip hop and dance record labels in the UK.

Among the artists Gee Street signed and/or promoted were Jon King/King Butcher, Funtopia, Gail Ann Dorsey, Queen Latifah, The Jungle Brothers, The Stereo MCs and PM Dawn.

Gee Street’s first major success was the release of Straight Out of the Jungle by the Jungle Brothers, which they had licensed from Warlock records; its Todd Terry-produced single “I’ll House You” went top 5 in the UK national charts. Another major success happened in 1988 when Julian Palmer of 4th and B’Way Records saw the Stereo MCs and signed them to a licensing deal with Island Records. Despite this success, Baker continued to work with and develop new acts. For example, in 1989 he brought PM Dawn to England to record. By 1991, PM Dawn’s demo had incredible underground buzz and garnered interest from all the major record labels.

Island Records 1991–1997 / V2 1997–2000

Gee Street Records fell on hard times following Rough Trade Distribution’s bankrucpy in 1990. However, PM Dawn’s underground success suddenly made Gee Street a very attractive property and a bidding war between major labels ensued. Ultimately, Chris Blackwell won out and proposed a joint venture with Island/Polygram that secured Gee Street’s roster for Island, provided that Baker relocate Gee Street’s headquarters to New York. Back in the US, Baker became a senior A&R man on the Island records team and head of Blackwell’s newly-formed Island Jamaica label for North America, which included Luciano, Chaka Demus and Pliars and Beenie Man among others. His first act once Gee Street was established in New York was to sign the Gravediggaz. He also remained President of Gee Street and enjoyed number one success on Billboard’s top 100 with PM Dawn’s hit Set Adrift on Memory Bliss, among other releases.

During this era, Baker distinguished himself as an executive. A major example of why took place in 1993 when he signed Malcolm McLaren, who had released Paris, to a licensing deal with Gee Street North America/Island. Baker, in association with James Truman, the then Editorial Director of Condé Nast, put together an infamous marketing campaign during NYC’s Fashion Week in which the album was launched on Fifth Avenue with Catherine Deneuve and Françoise Hardy in attendance for the event.

When Blackwell left Island and the Polygram group in 1996, Baker bought Gee Street and resold 75% of it to Richard Branson. In the deal, Baker retained control of Gee Street’s marketing, promotion and A&R, while Branson made Gee Street the cornerstone of V2 Records in North America and named Baker co-President. During this period he released a second Gravediggaz record and signed RZA to a solo record deal which yielded the first Bobby Digital album.

2000s/Jamaica

When the music industry began to falter in late 1999, Baker sold his shares of Gee Street. In 2002 he moved to Jamaica, became a Jamaican citizen and devoted his energy to developing Geejam, a residential recording studio and insider escape, that he had built in the late 1990s. Then, in 2008, Baker and his business partner Steve Beaver, refocused and opened Geejam as a very unique, private luxury hotel catering to artists and people with affinities towards the creative arts. A list of artists who have worked at Geejam includes Gorillaz, No Doubt, India.Arie, Dru Hill, Godwana, Les Nubians, Wyclef Jean, Björk, Drake, The Jolly Boys, Santigold and Amy Winehouse. The recording studio he has built is world class while the property itself strikes a stylish balance between modern technological convenience and organic Jamaican sensibility.

More recently, Baker has rebuilt Geejam as a lifestyle brand for the creative industries, particularly music, fashion and film. It now consists of a hotel, a media division (Geejam Media), a music division (Geejam Recordings) and a film division (Geejam Film), run by his good friend and collaborator Rick Elgood.