The Secret Ways of Al Baker
Preface
Todd Karr
Fifty years ago, Al Baker and Jay Marshall began work on a book.
Around 1951, as you will read in Jay’s opening essay, he suggested to Baker the idea of an anthology combining Baker’s various early writings, instruction sheets, articles, and other routines. Not long after they began assembling elements of their book, Baker died at the age of 77.
In the ensuing decades, Baker’s effects have continued to be performed, but his books long ago dwindled out of print and have been available only at premium prices. Thanks to Jay’s generosity in encouraging our own anthology and in sharing Baker materials from his collection, The Secret Ways of Al Baker holds the contents he and Al envisioned for their unfinished compilation...as well as a lot more than either Jay or I anticipated.
We are only the latest of many publishers who wanted to bring Al Baker’s wonderful magic into print. John Northern Hilliard proposed collaborating with Baker on a book to be entitled A Baker’s Dozen compiling thirteen Baker effects, but his idea never reached print.
Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, Baker published numerous articles and routines in magicians’ journals, released limited-circulation mimeographed manuscripts, and sold his individual effects as a mail-order dealer and magic-shop owner. His first steps into actual books were his two small but excellent collections Al Baker’s Book (1933) and Al Baker’s Second Book (1935), both published by Max Holden.
It took Minneapolis publisher Carl Jones – who had recently released Hilliard’s tome Greater Magic – to doggedly pursue Baker and convince him to assemble a full-scale book, a work eventually titled Magical Way and Means and published in 1941.
With Jones’ encouragement, Baker typed out dozens of his routines, some new, many old, and a few revised versions of his marketed effects. The resulting pages explained the nuances of Baker’s carefully devised methods and presentations in his clear, witty style.
Jones arranged for Baker to receive the aid of some of the best talent in the magic publishing business. He hired top magic writer Jean Hugard to clean up Baker’s prose. As the pages from the original manuscript (now in the collection of Charlie Randall) show, Baker authored the text and Hugard edited the rough edges, rewriting where necessary.
Harlan Tarbell drew original artwork for many of the effects, at times basing his drawings on Baker’s preliminary sketches. To explain the effects to the reader even more clearly, Jones took the innovative step of arranging for the brilliant photographer Irving Desfor to shoot frames for the book. Although Baker posed for most of the pictures, Jay Marshall lent his hands for the opening card routine A Lesson in Magic. Marshall’s hands also appear as the spectator in effects like the Stack of Quarters.
Jay recently recalled a classic Baker moment during the photo sessions: “I was watching Irving Desfor take pictures of Al Baker for his book Magical Ways and Means when Al picked up a deck of cards and asked me if I knew how to make a blank fan. I took the cards and said, ‘Sure. You just do a reverse pressure fan,’ and I did one. When I looked at the face of the deck, it was not blank. Al had handed me a deck which had pips printed on all four corners. In 1941, I had not seen such a deck.”
Al Baker’s wisdom is a powerful teacher, and I hope this book will enable magicians of today, after waiting so long, to once again absorb Baker’s standards of excellence.
— From Todd Karr's preface to The Secret Ways of Al Baker