As an artist, teacher, and musician, Rodney James Baker shaped countless lives, but he did it under the radar: throughout his career he remained fiercely independent, pursuing an idiosyncratic aesthetic that ensured he’d never reach a position of mainstream influence. He recorded his own tracks under the name Rodney Bakerr, but his most widely heard works were probably the house-music rhythm patterns he wrote in 1987 for the Roland Corporation, whose drum machines and synthesizers formed the bedrock of the Chicago sound at the time. Acid-house aficionados know him for his cult label, Rockin’ House, and he had a role in the histories of Chicago new wave and industrial music as well—with his group Strange Circuits, he recorded a 1980 single that could be considered the first Wax Trax! Records release. Baker passed away May 26 at age 70.

Baker returned to the U.S. in 1986, becoming an art instructor at the Chicago Vocational Career Academy (also known as CVS). His students began to bring house music into the classroom, and by the end of the year Baker had decided to start his own label, Rockin’ House. Its early releases—some of which feature CVS students, including Terrence Woodard and Fred Brown—are stripped-down and psychedelic, which Baker always attributed to his love of Hendrix.

  • The dub mix of Tyree Cooper’s 1988 Rockin’ House release “Video Crash”

At first, Cooper’s record (which included Marshall’s initials on the label) was more popular on the east coast than in Chicago. In fact, it was promptly bootlegged as “Acid Crash” by a distributor in New Jersey. “I never made much money from that, because it was bootlegged so badly,” Baker told me. Rockin’ House pressed only 2,000 copies of “Video Crash,” but between the bootlegs and imitators, it became the label’s most famous release. It also inspired Mike Dunn’s “Magic Feet,” which became even more widely known after its Dutch reissue in 1992.

At the time, many of Baker’s students dreamed of becoming rap stars, and Baker brought some of his own house beats into the classroom. “We had no idea that he was playing music from a genre he helped start, and we didn’t get it,” Fails admits. Years later Fails came to appreciate Baker’s influence on Chicago dance music, and he was shocked to learn that his former teacher had built an international following.

Baker eventually retired from teaching, but he kept up with his musical pursuits. Between 2017 and 2019, he repeatedly toured the UK with a solo incarnation of Strange Circuits. Just this past January, he began releasing music on Bandcamp. Baker’s work crossed many genres—most notably new wave, industrial, and raw, edgy acid house. He was continually experimenting and searching for success, and he inspired his students and the artists on his label to do the same.