Remembering Chet Baker, born on this day in 1929

The trumpeter, Chet Baker (December 23, 1929, Yale, Oklahoma, United States – May 13, 1988, Amsterdam, Netherlands), was born in the environment of a typical rural farm in the Oklahoma region. Around 1940, his family moved to California, and there his father, a guitar fan, instilled in him a love of jazz through the records of Jack Teagarden, a trombonist from the swing era.

His first instrument was logically a trombone, but his future was not written for sliding sticks, but for pressing pistons. At his city’s conservatory, the “Glendale High Shool”, he learned the basics of trumpet and immediately began playing in youth bands imitating the great white trumpeters of the time, Bix Beiderbecke and Harry James.

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At the age of 16 he enlisted in the army and when he graduated, he studied music theory at Camino College in Los Angeles. There he came into contact with the best bebop trumpet players: Fats Navarro, Dizzy Gillespie, Red Roney, etc. As work was not plentiful, he re-enlisted in the army in 1950, although a less than comfortable assignment in the Arizona desert separated him definitively from military life.

He returned to California and was fortunate that Charlie Parker, who was touring the area, needed a trumpet player for his group. Chet Baker joined the line of more than fifty applicants for the position waiting to audition at Tiffany’s Club. After listening to him, “Bird” had enough, he suspended the audition and hired him for several concerts on his California tour and also in Canada. Charlie Parker was so impressed with that young man that upon returning to New York, he warned Dizzy Gillespie and Miles Davis to be careful with that young white trumpet player.

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He met Gerry Mulligan in 1952 and they formed a peculiar quartet, the magnificent “Gerry Mulligan Quartet” in which, for the first time, the piano disappeared to make way for an agile and forceful wind line at the same time. That sound became so popular that it was taken as the emblem of jazz made on the West Coast of the United States, even though Mulligan came from New York and Baker had all his admirers on the East Coast. When Baker and Mulligan separated, the trumpeter found his next partner, the magnificent pianist, Russ Freeman, with whom he recorded very important albums.

He traveled to Europe in 1955, and brought Dick Twardzik to the piano, replacing Freeman who preferred not to travel. He has problems with drug issues, and is arrested in Italy and later in Germany, accused of trafficking heroin. He recorded some exceptional recordings in Paris and returned to New York where, due to a brutal beating, he lost his teeth and the ability to play the trumpet well. He recovered slowly and painfully and in the last stage of his career he recorded numerous magnificent albums especially for European labels. His death occurred under strange circumstances – they say someone threw him out of a window on May 13, 1988. With his death, jazz lost an exceptional musician.

Chet Baker Late night jazz

Track List:

00:00 skylark 5:31 if you could see me now 10:11 the bird from kapingamarangi 13:40 how high the moon 16:13 makin whoopie 18:41 the ballad of buttersmile 22:31 body and soul 26:43 blamann, blamann 30:29 children’s waltz 33:30 alice in wonderland 40:13 love for sale 44:44 my foolish heart 50:03 i want a little girl 54:16 body and soul (alternative take) 59:44 if you could see me now (alternative take) 1:05:40 makin whoopie (alternative take)

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