Latest Release
- 8 MAY 2024
- 50 Songs
- She Was Too Good to Me (40th Anniversary Edition) · 1974
- Chet Baker Sings · 1954
- Chet Baker Sings · 1954
- Plays and Sings · 1999
- Chet Baker Sings · 1954
- The Touch of Your Lips · 1979
- Chet Baker Sings and Plays (Remastered) · 1955
- Chet For Lovers · 1956
- The Legendary Riverside Albums · 2019
- Seven Faces of Valentine · 1992
Essential Albums
- This 1989 compilation, much like its 1992 companion The Best of Chet Baker Plays, gathers tracks from different sessions to paint a portrait of an immortal jazz stylist. The first eight songs and the final six are from Chet Baker Sings (1956), while the middle six are from Chet Baker Sings and Plays (1955). Four tunes from the latter that involved string arrangements got left off, and the omission underscores how different Baker was from the marquee crooners of the day, who were often backed by big orchestras. Baker retained the sensibility of a small-group jazz artist who saw his trumpet improvisations as inseparable from his singing. So on these sessions he did both, imbuing everything with his mellow, casually hip delivery, securing a unique double status as a teen idol and a legit West Coast bebopper. Every melody here is spot-on, and the expressive range, from the almost dirge-like “My Funny Valentine” to the sunny swing of “Let’s Get Lost”, is remarkable.
Artist Playlists
- His caressing voice and trumpet personified jazz's cool school.
- Reinterpretations and late-career collabs from the trumpeter.
- Lean back and relax with some of their mellowest cuts.
Appears On
- Stan Getz Quartet
- The Mariachi Brass
About Chet Baker
Trumpeter and singer Chet Baker’s father was a professional guitarist who gave up the instrument to support his family during the Great Depression. ∙ In 1946, Baker dropped out of school at age 16 to enlist in the U.S. Army, where he played trumpet in military bands. ∙ Even before he made his first album as a bandleader, he had already won the DownBeat poll as the best trumpet player in jazz—at age 24. ∙ Along with Miles Davis, Gerry Mulligan, and Dave Brubeck, Baker was one of the principal architects of the West Coast “cool school” jazz scene. ∙ His debut vocal album, Chet Baker Sings—which includes his acclaimed renditions of “My Funny Valentine,” “That Old Feeling,” and “I Fall In Love Too Easily”—was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame. ∙ Baker’s artistry and movie-star good looks inspired the character Chad Bixby, played by Robert Wagner, in the 1960 film All the Fine Young Cannibals. ∙ Let’s Get Lost, the 1998 Oscar-nominated documentary filmed near the end of his life, chronicles how his remarkable talent had been derailed by drug addiction. ∙ Ethan Hawke played Baker in the 2015 biopic Born to Be Blue.
- HOMETOWN
- Yale, OK, United States
- BORN
- 23 de diciembre de 1929
- GENRE
- Jazz