Book Review: Down on the Corner: Adventures in Busking & Street Music

Busking has a long, storied and often proud history. The practice of performing music in public spaces – ostensibly for free, presumably for tips – has been part of the fabric of music since time immemorial. From renaissance minstrels to the London Underground, from rural itinerant musicians on foot to buskers in cities across the globe, buskers have been bringing music to the masses (or at least passersby) seemingly forever. And so it is high time for an intrepid author to take a deeper dive into that tradition, its history, its development and current state. Happily, Cary Baker is just the man for the job.

Some of Baker’s earliest encounters with the musical denizens of Chicago’s vibrant blues scene were published when he was still a teen. Baker got his start as a radio deejay when still a student, hosting a Tuesday night blues program on his high school’s radio station. He launched a fanzine and eventually pitched a story about a Maxwell Street busker called Blind Arvella Gray. That piece would be published in Chicago Reader in 1972. He’d go on to write for many other publications including Living Blues. A talented and industrious freelancer, Baker also wrote for many other music-focused publications beyond the blues.

As it happens, though, Baker would, in a sense, take himself out of the game for a few decades; he took something of a detour. Thanks in part to his enthusiastic and articulate championing the careers of key Midwest bands in the power pop genre (Cheap Trick and Shoes foremost among those), by the early 1980s Baker found himself an industry insider, working in music publicity. Over the next several years he worked closely with top-line artists including R.E.M., Crowded House, Paul McCartney and others. Yet all the while his love for what is now widely described as roots music remained at his core.

So Baker eventually left the majors and in 2004 hung out his own shingle, Conqueroo, a boutique publicity firm. By necessity, Baker’s freelancing took a back seat as he (among myriad other duties) wrote press releases for artists like NRBQ, Bobby Rush, Leo “Bud” Welch and countless others.

In March 2022, Cary Baker retired from the business. Now, finally, he had time to write a book, one even more in line with his strongest musical interests. And as well-written and informative as his press releases of the preceding two decades have been, it’s a breath of fresh air to read his prose in book form. As much as he truly believed in the artistry of his Conqueroo clients, within the pages of Down on the Corner Baker writes like a man freed of the constraints of PR work. His knowledge and dedication have never been in question; now his passion comes through on every page as well.

Because busking is not and has never been limited to the blues, the chapters within Down on the Corner – some detailed histories, others vignettes, still others wonderfully quote-heavy – explore busking in all its forms. Of particular interest to LB readers will be the early chapters on the Maxwell Street scene and a later entry focusing upon modern-day blues hero Fantastic Negrito. But there is joy, wisdom and illumination to be found in all of the book’s 31 chapters (and in Dom Flemons’ knowing foreword).

Whatever the specific subject, Baker writes with a deft balance of reportorial precision, storytelling expertise, a way with evocative phrases that sometimes rivals the great bluesmen, and – perhaps most critically – the dedication of a lifelong music enthusiast. Itself a celebration of busking, Down on the Corner is to be celebrated both for its content and for heralding Cary Baker’s welcome return to the world of musical authorship.