[TR24][OF] Chet Baker - Baker's Holiday - 1965/2012 (Jazz)

Few musicians have embodied the romantic, and ultimately tragic, jazz figure as totally as Chesney "Chet" Baker (1929-88). Unschooled yet eloquent in his music, and a fast liver who somehow managed to survive for nearly six decades, the Baker mystique has only reinforced one of the most haunting trumpet styles and ingenuous approaches to jazz singing.

Baker, who never learned to read music, got his training in army bands, where he developed a spare and introverted voice on the horn. The Oklahoma native gravitated to Los Angeles after his discharge, and beat out all of the local competition in an audition for a short tour with Charlie Parker in 1952. Later that year, he began working with Gerry Mulligan in a quartet that established an instant personality through the absence of a piano and the intriguing counterpoint between trumpet and baritone sax. An early recording of "My Funny Valentine" by the Mulligan quartet caused a national sensation and made the fragile sound of Baker's horn emblematic of an entire "cool" attitude.

In 1953, Baker began a recording and performing relationship with pianist Russ Freeman that solidified his status as a major jazz star. One key to this success was Baker's singing, which sustained the wistful vulnerability of his trumpet work. Baker's good looks and growing reputation for high living also fed his notoriety, although a growing frequency of drug incidents (including one that claimed the life of pianist Richard Twardzik during a 1955 European tour by Baker's quartet) soon began to overshadow Baker's playing. Yet somehow, in this period as later in his career, Baker was able to keep his music under control, and to incorporate any technical lapses into the fabric of his image.

While the cool label became a Baker trademark, he was in fact a modern trumpeter who could play with the hardest boppers, as several recordings made in New York during the late Fifties demonstrate. By decade's end, Baker was living in Europe, where he hoped to pursue a film career as well as music; but further drug problems led to a prison sentence in and set Baker upon the peripatetic lifestyle that he pursued for the next quarter century. He returned to the in 1964, where he made several fine albums with George Coleman and Kirk Lightsey. Then his career seemed permanently ended in 1968, when Baker lost his teeth in an altercation with other junkies in San Francisco. He stopped playing for two years, then resurfaced again in New York in 1973, where he renewed his recording career. Much of his final decade was spent in Europe, often working with a trio completed by guitar and bass. Always in need of money to support his addictions, and still widely popular, Baker became one of the most voluminously documented jazz artists in history during the 1980s.

Prior to his mysterious death in Amsterdam, where he fell out of a hotel window, Baker was the subject of Bruce Weber's film Let's Get Lost, a fascinating study of hero worship and self-destruction.

The late Billie Holiday left behind, as a reminder of her greatness, a huge body of recordings. Her singing was only a part of the legacy, however. Billie's introduction of many new songs, and what she did with the old songs, helped to swell the storehouse of the jazz repertoire for all the singers and players who grew up with her, as well as those who came after.
This is a tribute to Lady Day from one who is both a singer and a player - fluegelhornist Chet Baker. "Her style was so unique - so different," he says of Billie. "She had a way of combining singing and talking a tune that was very intimate. One thing I really liked about her was that she never raised her voice. At least I never heard her shout. Her way of singing really reflected a lot of soul. Billie Holiday was Billie Holiday - that's all. She was great. She always did the best tunes, tunes that really lent themselves to her style of singing. She really didn't have a great voice, but what she did with it..."
Chet, another vocalist who doesn't shout, began singing long before he took up the trumpet. "When I was 11 or 12, my mother used to drag me around to the amateur contests that they had in Los Angeles on Sunday afternoons. I never won but I was second once. Even at that time, I was singing the current ballads. I sang in a church choir at the same time - 1941 and 1942.
"My phrasing as a singer," continues Baker, "has been influenced a lot by my playing. If I hadn't been a trumpet player, I don't know if I would have arrived at singing that way eventually. I probably wouldn't have.
"The things I'm really conscious of when I sing are intonation, good diction without over-enunciating, a casual, relaxed way of phrasing, and singing in tune."
In mentioning some of his favorite singers, Chet says, "I like Frank (Sinatra), of course, Mel Torme, David Allen," and adds, "but I've never listened to singers with the idea of copying anybody."
This has long been evident in Baker's tender, highly personal style and is reiterated by the vocals in this set: Travelin' Light; Easy Living; When You Lover Has Gone; and There Is No Greater Love.
The sound of his fluegelhorn is warm and tender, too, but there is also some good, medium-tempo swinging among the instrumental selections: That Old Devil Called Love; You're My Thrill; Crazy She Calls Me; Mean To Me; These Foolish Things; and Don't Explain.
~ note at vervemusicgroup.com

Mastering of this title was completed by Kevin Reeves at Sterling Sound NYC, using the original 1/4” analog stereo masters from the EmArcy Vault. The masters were played on a modified Studer A820 with Wolke Butterfly heads and converted to digital at 192kHz/24bit resolution using the DCS 904. All equalization and level setting was done in the analog domain using Sterling’s proprietary mastering systems.