Jon Baker (producer)

Jon Baker (born 1960) is a music industry executive. He has worked as a fashion designer, promoter, and is currently co-owner of Geejam, a luxury resort and recording studio located in San San, near Port Antonio, Jamaica.

Baker was born in 1960. His father was a specialist car dealer and his mother Maureen Baker was head designer at the British ready-to-wear fashion firm Susan Small, who designed dresses for Princess Anne (including her wedding dress) and other notable people.

In 1977 Baker went to the Chelsea School of Art in London, where he was introduced to the punk scene. In 1978, he opened "Blooz", a shop in Kensington Market that specialized in punk rock and new wave style T-shirts. By the end of that year, Baker had become part of the burgeoning post-punk new romantic movement, influenced by Chris Sullivan, Boy George, Sade and Spandau Ballet and based largely around the Blitz Club. In 1978, Baker opened a fashion store called Axiom in the Great Gear Market on King's Road in London and was a stylist for many New Romantic bands such as Spandau Ballet and Duran Duran). In 1980 Baker traveled to New York to stage a fashion show by Axiom designers, coupled with a performance by Spandau Ballet at the Underground Club on Union Square Park.

In the early 1980s Baker moved to New York and worked with Ruza Blue, a British expat and music promoter, who brought him to Disco Fever, an important early hip hop club in the Bronx. The two started a popular hip hop night at NYC’s Club Negril. When Negril proved too small a venue, the two promoted an important and very popular Friday night hip hop party at The Roxy. During this era, Baker also ran Jon Baker Productions, a small booking agency that brought well known club nights from London and Berlin to New York’s Danceteria, and British design collectives to New York and produced fashion shows for nightclubs like Danceteria, the Roxy, the Peppermint Lounge, and The Ritz.

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