Lennie Baker

Sonny and Putzie “dropped trou” right in front of the bandstand and brought the dancing at Rydell High School to a screeching, scandalizing halt. That’s what happened in the 1978 movie Grease; the rotund crooner for Johnny Casino & The Gamblers stopped in the middle of – appropriately enough – “Blue Moon.” That rotund crooner was actually Lennie Baker and the scene was among the highlights of a career that spanned three decades of song and saxophone as part of the wildly popular retro group Sha Na Na.

Baker was born and raised in Whitman, Massachusetts and died in Weymouth in February 2016 at age 69. Hovering at around 300 pounds, he was the “round mound of sound” in Sha Na Na for 30 years and his growling sax and mellow tenor voice were as recognizable as the group’s signature song, “Goodnight, Sweetheart,” with which they ended every performance. He began playing sax in his high school band, then joined Paul Wayne and The Wantels in the early 1960s, making the rounds of sock hops and battles of the bands around the Massachusetts South Shore.

Eventually, Baker joined The Pilgrims, a rock/soul band that dressed in ersatz Pilgrim costumes and performed at night spots from The Surf on Nantasket Beach and Mt. Tom in Holyoke to many of the notorious dives in Boston’s  “Combat Zone.” Arnie “Woo Woo” Ginsburg of WMEX labeled him the band’s “Plymouth Rock.” Sometime in 1970, he got a phone call from former Pilgrims drummer Jack “Jocko” Marcellino (of Milton, Massachusetts), whose band, Sha Na Na, had appeared at Woodstock the year before and was looking for a singer/saxophonist. Baker became a member immediately and spent the next three decades touring the world (23 countries in total) and playing concerts at prestigious venues (including Carnegie Hall). From 1977 to 1981, the group hosted a syndicated television variety series that aired weekly across the US.

In 2000, ill-health forced Baker’s retirement from the band and he relocated to Martha’s Vineyard before settling in Halifax, Massachusetts, where he made local appearances with a group called The Spellbinders. In the days before his death, he received phone calls and loving expressions of support from Sha Na Na members Marcellino and Jon “Bowzer” Bauman. He became the fifth member of the group to pass away, joining Chris “Vinnie Taylor” Donald (1974), David-Allen “Chico” Ryan (1998), Daniel “Dirty Dan” McBride (2008) and Frederick “Dennis” Green (2015). Friends remember Baker as “generous”, “sweet”, “a people person”, “honest” and “a hard guy not to like.” Oh yes, and “cantankerous.” Baker’s response, as always, would be the phrase he used as a mantra of sorts: “Grease for peace.”

(by Richard Mattulina)