Chet Baker Re:imagined

Released at the peak of West Coast cool jazz, the romantic understatement of Chet Baker’s 1954 album Chet Baker Sings has influenced everything from downtempo and trip-hop to the amateur sweetness of indie folk—if it’s chill, it is, on some genealogical level, Chet. That most of the featured interpreters here are under 30 is a testament to the album’s impact. That they don’t do much to change Baker’s sound is a testament to how contemporary that sound still is: the hangdog humor (Matt Maltese’s “My Funny Valentine”), the androgynous sexuality (grentperez’s “But Not for Me”), the almost transcendent plainness that can play as both intimate and aloof (mxmtoon’s “I Fall in Love Too Easily”). Remember, too, that most of the songs here were already considered old-fashioned by the time Baker recorded them. By stripping out the ornament, he found something unexpected underneath: the modern.