Song of a Baker
Young man with a horn had more than track marks up his sleeve. By Jim Irvin.
There are around 200 albums with Chet Baker’s name on them, partly because his popularity waxed and waned several times during his long career, spurring numerous reissues of many sessions, but possibly also a function of his longterm, ultimately ruinous heroin habit, which urged him to cut as many albums for different labels as humanly possible, most of them, presumably, for cash in hand. And thence into his arm. A kid from Yale, Oklahoma with James Dean looks and a lyrical, cool trumpet style which, he found, he could replicate vocally, on form he caressed melodies until they purred. But his vast output is of varying quality. You can probably live without the six mariachi albums he cut in ’66. Chet features strongly in an enterprising new series called Jazz Images which is reissuing 50 jazz albums in brand new sleeves sporting the work of French photographic legend Jean-Pierre Leloir, who died in 2010 leaving thousands of striking images of American jazz musicians in Paris. So now Chet Baker Sings, In Paris, Chet Is Back!, Chet & Dick and Alone Together are available in handsome new but different guises, just to add to the catalogue confusion. Aged 14, Leloir was given a camera by an American GI when Paris was liberated in
“BAKER SURPRISED FANS OF HIS TRUMPET PLAYING WITH HIS DELICATE, VELVET VOICE.”
1945. He became enthralled with it and, soon after, by jazz. By 20 he was photographing the greats for Parisian jazz publications: Miles, Chet, Ella, Louis, Duke, Art, Billie and Lester; Mingus, Coltrane, Simone, Evans, Rollins and Monk all treated Paris as a second home, and are all present in these new editions. Some titles are on CD and vinyl; some only in one format. CDs often include whole bonus albums of extra material. Leloir’s pictures, mostly black and white portraits, taken at work, rest and play, go beyond the usual tropes of jazz photography. Yes, there are smokey, late night scenes, but there’s also Ella Fitzgerald in a speedboat, Miles Davis sunbathing and Nina Simone swimming with her daughter. Classic titles in new Leloir coats include Miles’s Kind Of Blue and Sketches Of Spain, Dexter Gordon’s Go!, Dave Brubeck’s Time Out and Mingus’s Ah Um. The peach among the Baker titles is on vinyl, Chet Baker Sings (Jazz Images) Originally issued as a 10-inch LP by Pacific Jazz in 1954, Baker surprised fans of his trumpet playing with his delicate, velvet singing voice, which wavers between controlled wholesomeness and bruised naivety. This version is the 1956, 14-track expansion. Among the original eight titles is what many regard the best ever rendition of Rodgers & Hart’s witty My Funny Valentine. Heartstrings will also resonate to Chet’s take on The Thrill Is Gone, a performance that convinces the listener that it has, but really, it hasn’t.