Jon Baker (producer)

Jon Baker is a 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 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) which beat Michael Jackson, Michael Bolton and Brian Adams to the number one position.. During this period, he also produced LA Reid’s song “I Die Without You” for the Boomerang film soundtrack. It reached number one on Billboard’s Urban chart.

In 1993, Baker signed Malcolm McLaren to a licensing deal with Gee Street North America/Island. McLaren had just released the album Paris, and Baker, in association with James Truman, the then Editorial Director of Condé Nast, put together a notable marketing campaign during NYC’s Fashion Week in which the album was launched at an event on Fifth Avenue with Catherine Deneuve and Françoise Hardy in attendance.

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. He also produced LA Reid’s song “I Die Without You” for the Boomerang film soundtrack.

2000s/Jamaica

When the music industry began to falter in late 2000, Baker sold his shares of Gee Street to Richard Branson. In 2002 he moved to Jamaica, became a Jamaican citizen and continued working in music. That year, he produced the album Adelante, which featured Kymani Marley, Alberto D’Ascola (aka Alborosie) and others. It was released by Epic France and Forward Recordings, a company Baker formed in Jamaica as a 7” 45rpm record label specializing in eclectic world and reggae music. Between 2004 and 2008 Forward released numerous singles and produced several popular riddims, notably “Cesar” and “XXL.”

In 2000 Alborosie became the house engineer and a producer at Geejam. Over the next several years, Baker and he worked to develop his solo career, which led to the critically acclaimed 2008 album Soul Pirate and a limited edition release on Forward Recordings.

Then, in, 2004 Baker produced Two Culture Clash in collaboration with producer Mark Jones in the UK. This project brought Jamaican dancehall and British dance music artists together and initiated a long term association between the two industry veterans. Baker and Jones’s association continues, most recently with the Jolly Boys project (see below). That year, Baker also became a consultant for New Reality TV’s Digicel Rising Star talent competition on Jamaica’s TVJ television station in 2004 (he reprised this role in 2005). Geejam provided artist development packages to the show’s winner.,

In 2005, Baker came back in contact with music business executive and one time associate Steve Beaver of the Hong Kong-based Beaver Music. That chance meeting led to their collaboration on the 2006 Singerz Collection album series for Universal Japan, which featured contemporary songs interpreted in a reggae style. Later that year, however, Baker and Beaver went into a more formal partnership and agreed to develop Geejam into a luxury private hotel. To this point, Baker had devoted a great deal of his energy to make Geejam an exclusive residential recording studio. The studio’s resources had earned a string reputation among industry insiders and attracted several top artists including Gorillaz, No Doubt, India.Arie, Dru Hill, Godwana, Les Nubians, Wyclef Jean and Björk. This major step with Beaver included a property expansion and significant construction.

Geejam opened to worldwide critical acclaim in 2008 as a unique, private luxury hotel catering to artists and people with affinities towards the creative arts. It’s warm critical reception and early success attracted Chris Blackwell, who offered Geejam marketing sales and services through the Island Outpost brand. Between 2008 and 2010, Geejam became one of the world’s finest luxury resorts and was rated Jamaica’s number one hotel by travel review website TripAdvisor.com in March 2010. More recently, Baker has put his efforts into building Geejam as a lifestyle brand for the creative industries with a focus on music, fashion and film. The music division has been particularly successful, with Drake, Santigold, Major Lazer and Amy Winehouse all completing recent projects at Geejam’s studio. The company’s most intense growth, however, has been in its media division. Since 2000, Geejam Media has furnished Jamaican corporate brands (including Cable and Wireless and the Jamaica Tourist Board) with music production services and television adversing (this, largely through its film division, which is run by his good friend and collaborator Rick Elgood. In early 2010, Baker opened a Geejam Group office in Kingston and established the media division’s “street team,” an entity partially composed of students recruited from the University of the West Indies, Mona. Its sole purpose is to market and promote projects and clients like the Jamaica Tourist Board (JTB) through their Visit Jamaica website and Vibes Jamaica YouTube channel. This innovative approach has given the JTB a significantly expanded social media footprint, both in its Facebook page and YouTube Channel.

The Geejam Group’s most recent project involved the Jamaican mento band The Jolly Boys. Developed entirely in house with producer Dale Virgo, the group’s album Great Expectation featured a retro takes on modern rock repertory. It was released in the UK on September 13 to strong critical reception and commercial success throughout Europe. A US release is scheduled for release on E One Music/Geejam in April 2011.