Today is the 93rd birthday of the musician Chet Baker. I have included a YouTube video below that can be the soundtrack to your entire holiday party. It flows so perfectly, you need to add it to your playlist. The world is a better place because he was in it and still feels the loss that he has left.
NAME: Chet Baker
OCCUPATION: Trumpet Player, Singer
BIRTH DATE: December 23, 1929
DEATH DATE: May 13, 1988
EDUCATION: El Camino College
PLACE OF BIRTH: Yale, Oklahoma
PLACE OF DEATH: Amsterdam, Netherlands
REMAINS: Buried, Inglewood Park Cemetery, Inglewood, CA
BIG BAND AND JAZZ HALL OF FAME 1987
BEST KNOWN FOR: American jazz trumpeter and singer Chet Baker became a star on the strength of such songs as “My Funny Valentine” before his career was derailed by drug use.
Chesney Henry “Chet” Baker Jr. was born on December 23, 1929, in Yale, Oklahoma, and moved to the Los Angeles area with his family at age 10. The son of musically inclined parents, he sang in church choirs and tried his hand at trombone before turning to trumpet at age 13.
Baker dropped out of school at 16 to join the Army, and played in bands during his two stints in the armed forces. In between, he was turned on to the music of Miles Davis and became involved in the Los Angeles jazz scene.
Baker’s musical career took off after he earned the chance to play with jazz great Charlie Parker in 1952. That year he joined saxophonist Gerry Mulligan’s pianoless quartet, and the pairing of Baker’s subdued tone and gentle phrasing with Mulligan’s ear for harmonies proved a dynamic combination. The quartet reeled off such favorites as “Walkin’ Shoes,” “Bernie’s Tune” and “My Funny Valentine,” which became one of Baker’s signature songs.
Named Metronome magazine’s top trumpeter in 1953, Baker formed his own quartet and began contributing his delicate vocals to songs, most notably on the 1954 track “Let’s Get Lost.” Blessed with movie-star looks, the popular trumpeter enhanced his international standing with European tours in 1955 and ’56, but his charmed life began to erode after he became addicted to heroin around that time.
Baker moved to Europe in 1959, his drug use landing him in legal hot water in both Italy and Germany. He recorded five records over a three-day period after returning to the United States in 1964, but subsequent recording efforts were panned by critics. In July 1966, he endured a brutal beating by drug dealers that knocked out his teeth and left him unable to play the trumpet properly for years.
Baker gradually regained his skills, with Dizzy Gillespe helping to set him on the comeback trail by arranging a concert at New York City’s Half Note club in the early 1970s. He returned to Europe in 1975, where he regularly performed and recorded despite essentially living as a nomad. Although years of hard living had withered his youthful voice and looks, many considered his output from this period to be among the best of his career.
Just weeks after delivering a lauded performance with the NDR Big Band and Hannover Radio Orchestra, Chet Baker was found dead outside his Amsterdam hotel in the early hours of May 13, 1988. His second-floor room window was open and drugs were found in his system, although it was never known whether his death was accidental or not.
In subsequent years, the release of Baker’s unfinished memoirs, As Though I Had Wings (1997), and James Gavin’s Deep in a Dream: The Long Night of Chet Baker (2002), provided details of the jazz icon’s troubled but memorable life and career.
FILMOGRAPHY AS ACTOR
Let’s Get Lost (15-Sep-1988) · Himself
Stolen Hours (16-Oct-1963) · Himself
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