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Hi folks!

I was born and raised in London, England and grew up there during the golden age of pop music in the 1960s. The soundtrack of my childhood was provided by the Beatles, Rolling Stones, Kinks and all the other good stuff which was going down at that time. Unfortunately, my teachers and parents all told me I was utterly unmusical and for many years I believed them. This changed suddenly one day in 1969 when I picked up a harmonica belonging to a friend and realized that it had been sitting there waiting for me. I taught myself to play within a year or so with the assistance of the first Paul Butterfield Blues Band LP on Elektra and Duster Bennett's first Blue Horizon release, Smiling Like I'm Happy and I've been hooked ever since.

After listening intensively to classic blues harmonica players such as Sonny Terry, Walter Horton, Sonny Boy Williamson 1 (the real one, John Lee Williamson) and 2 (Rice Miller, who stole the first one's name), in the early 1970s I became a devotee of American West Coast music and spent several years immersed in the sounds of the Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, early Steve Miller and the like. I rediscovered the blues in 1975 when I was asked to join a crazed Anglo-American band called Have Mercy.

This was during the early days of the punk era in London, which saw the emergence of seminal bands such as the Clash. Though we didn't realize it at the time, our ravingly manic renditions of country blues and jugband classics had a great deal in common with them and by complete coincidence we recorded our first LP at exactly the same time in February 1977. By that time Have Mercy had relocated to Hamburg, Germany and before we knew it we'd become professional musicians. I've had the good fortune to make my living from playing harmonica ever since and never moved back to Britain.

In the late 1970s and through the 80s I was lucky enough to play with a number of great performers including Tony Sheridan (the man who fired the Beatles), Champion Jack Dupree, Alexis Korner and Louisiana Red, as well as appearing as a studio musician on recordings by numerous German and international artists, among them Al Martino, James Last and Dionne Warwick. Since 1990 I've mainly performed with Hamburg's blues legend Abi Wallenstein (presently in BluesCulture with cajon player Martin Röttger). I also worked for 11 years with the late great Chris Jones, one of the most amazing musicians I've met in my life and one of the finest acoustic guitarists ever. We released 4 CDs on Acoustic Music Records and played countless gigs together until Chris' tragically early death in September 2005 shortly before the release of our fourth CD "Gotta Look Up". He was a dear friend and is sadly missed.

Since 1987 I've worked as a consultant for harmonica manufacturer Hohner, closely involved in product development (most recently the Marine Band Deluxe) as well as harmonica education and coordination with the pro and semi-pro scene. This led me to start writing and resulted in a bunch of books including The Harp Handbook, the first harmonica instruction CD-ROM and three volumes of playalongs.

I've also been involved in the organisation of numerous harmonica events, mostly in Hohner's hometown of Trossingen, and have been a guest artist at many others, featuring world-renowned harmonica artists such as Jerry Murad & the Harmonicats, Toots Thielemans, Pete Pedersen, Kim Wilson, Jerry Portnoy, Lee Oskar, Charlie Musselwhite, J.J.Milteau, Howard Levy, William Galison, Peter Madcat Ruth, Gary Primich, Greg Szlapzynski, Franz Chmel, Mark Hummel, Claude Garden, Paul Lamb, Johnny Mars, Robert Bonfiglio, Yasuo Watani, Larry Adler, Steven de Bruyn, Eddie Martin and many others. In 2003 I initiated the Harmonica Masters Workshops in Trossingen, a four day educational event featuring courses by Joe Filisko, Carlos del Junco, Brendan Power and myself. The 4th Harmonica Masters Workshops 2007 feature master harmonica educator David Barrett as well as classes by Joe, Carlos and myself.

For more info please visit my website www.stevebaker.de