Baker Street The Title A Song

The Gift

"Baker Street" is a ballad song written and first recorded by Scottish singer-songwriter Gerry Rafferty. Released as a single in 1978, it reached #2 in the USA and #3 in the UK, in addition to reaching #9 in the Netherlands. The heavily produced arrangement is especially famous for its saxophone solo, played by Raphael Ravenscroft. A readers' poll conducted by Rolling Stone in 2008 placed the song among the "100 greatest guitar songs of all time".

Named after the famous London street of the same name, the song was included on Rafferty's second solo album, City to City, which was Rafferty's first release after the resolution of legal problems surrounding the formal breakup of his old band, Stealers Wheel in 1975. In the intervening three years, Rafferty had been unable to release any material due to disputes about the band's remaining contractual recording obligations.

Rafferty wrote the song during a period when he was trying to extricate himself from his Stealers Wheel contracts, and was regularly travelling between his family home near Glasgow and London, where he often stayed at a friend's flat in Baker Street. The resolution of his legal and financial frustrations accounted for the exhilaration of the song's last verse: "When you wake up it's a new morning/ The sun is shining, it's a new morning/ You're going, you're going home.

The album City to City, including "Baker Street", was co-produced by Rafferty and Hugh Murphy. In addition to a guitar solo, played by Hugh Burns, the song features a prominent eight-bar saxophone riff played as a break between verses, by Raphael Ravenscroft. The solo had been intended for guitar. Ravenscroft was in the studio to record a brief soprano saxophone part and, when he heard that the guitarist would not be available to play the solo, suggested that he record it using the alto saxophone he had in his car. The solo led to what became known as "the 'Baker Street' phenomenon", a resurgence in the sales of saxophones and their use in mainstream pop music and TV advertising. 

The saxophone solo was also the subject in the UK of an urban myth created in the 1980s by British writer and broadcaster Stuart Maconie. As one of the spoof facts invented for the regular "Would You Believe It?" section in the New Musical Express, Maconie falsely claimed that British actor and television presenter Bob Holness had played the saxophone solo on the recording. Later, the claim was widely repeated.