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Anita Baker Singer's caught up in the rapture of Detroit
It's the day after Easter, but singer Anita Baker hasn't been cleaning up candy wrappers from her sons' Easter baskets. "Oh no, I have them give back now," Baker says of her 13- and 14-year-old sons. "They give Easter baskets to their grandparents. They fill them up with things their grandparents might need." Such home training is part of what Baker sees as her "Midwestern" values, along with a deep, almost mystical affection for her home city and state, and the quiet charitable work she does through her church, Hartford Memorial, and her record company, Blue Note. When the Detroit Pistons call for someone to sing the national anthem, Baker is there, whether glammed up or with "mom" hair. When the Detroit Tigers called on her to perform the same duty during the World Series, she proudly represented, and afterward happily spoke to the press in the same spot where a younger diva had pulled attitude a day earlier. Sitting in a coffeehouse she calls her "joint," Baker explains why she still lives here when her sultry contralto could be cosseted by a warmer entertainment city. "It's home. I feel naked anyplace else. I lived in L.A. for five years, and I just felt out of place." Born in Toledo, Baker grew up in Detroit surrounded by the sounds of the city's vibrant R&B scene, an ardent fan of Aretha Franklin, Diana Ross and all the Motown acts. She talks about mopping the kitchen floor as a young girl, listening to Franklin sing, "You're a no good heartbreaker. You're a liar and you're a cheat." Baker didn't know what the words meant, but she know it was deep, it was adult, and she found her own voice from singing along. After helping relaunch romantic R&B in the '80s, Baker dialed back her career in the mid-'90s to stay home and raise her sons. She stayed active in the community, launching a scholarship foundation devoted to a Detroit public school. Today she does work for seniors, education and food banks largely through Hartford Memorial Baptist Church and her record company. "I look for places that have a wide outreach, because I can't cover as many things as I'm inspired by," Baker says. "Inspiration is spontaneous, and so there's not always a lot of time to plan, so I try to work through organizations that are already set up for philanthropic and community situations." Susan Whitall
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Maggie Allesee