On 13 May 1988, American trumpeter Chet Baker (1929 – 1988) died after falling from the window of his hotel room at the Prins Hendrikkade in Amsterdam. A day later, I heard his music on the radio for the first time. His muted trumpet solo sounded emotional controlled and sincere. Baker’s androgynous singing voice gave me chills: ‘I Fall In Love Too Easily’. During those three-and-a-half minutes, my love for jazz awoke.
Thirty-six years later, I saw the re-released and restored film Let’s Get Lost (1988) which followed Baker in his final days. A dubious product, though that wasn’t down to the trumpeter. Filmmaker Bruce Weber pulled out all the stops to make his protagonist feel comfortable. He bought huge amounts of drugs, repeatedly refilled Baker’s wine glass and placed beautiful young models on either side of the musician who snuggled up close to him. When none of this helped, he made the trumpeter ride around in a bumper car. He didn’t manage to open up the introverted musician. At most, Baker talked a bit more drawlingly. Weber had no affinity with Baker’s music whatsoever. The filmmaker was mainly interested in sensational stories. Baker’s friends, family members, fellow musicians and even Weber’s own staff felt ‘used’ afterwards.
Thanks to iconic photographs by William Caxton and others, Chet Baker looked like the ideal son-in-law in his light suits in the 1950s. The young Baker played cool jazz with mostly white musicians like baritone saxophonist Gerry Mulligan. The west-coast jazz from Los Angeles was more accessible than the fast-paced bebop made in New York. When Baker also started singing, American girls fell for him collectively. ‘My Funny Valentine’ became a hit, the charts ranked Baker the best trumpet player and he was offered several film roles.
In reality, Baker had never been an ideal son-in-law. He smoked marijuana while still in high school. He felt no better at all than New York’s black jazz musicians and knew he was indebted to them. Baker looked up to jazz innovators Charlie Parker and Miles Davis and felt honoured when he got to play with them. Unfortunately, he not only adopted their musical techniques, but also copied their use of heavy opiates. That Parker died in 1955 at the age of thirty-four apparently did not deter him enough.
In the same year, Baker performed in the Netherlands for the first time. Writer Remco Campert saw the trumpeter at the Concertgebouw and was deeply impressed: ‘You could hear a speck of dust falling. When he sang ‘My Funny Valentine’, the whole hall was a big lump in the throat.’ British music magazine Melody Maker wrote about Baker’s concert in Scheveningen: ‘No shouting from a sensationalist audience, but deep silence during the songs and warm applause at the end of each piece. Onstage, any sense of effect was omitted. Chet and his men brought their music completely sincere and with deep seriousness.’
America got fed up with Baker, Europe welcomed the thoughtfully playing musician with open arms. The difference between American and European audiences is reflected in the different perspectives of two Baker biographies. James Gavin wrote Deep in a Dream: The Long Night of Chet Baker (2003). This American biographer draws the same conclusion as the film Let’s Get Lost: Baker was interesting for the first five years of his career, then he got into drugs and stopped making significant records. On the music itself, Gavin wastes hardly any words, while describing Baker’s intravenous acts in detail as if he accompanied the trumpeter on every toilet visit.
In 2007, Jeroen de Valk wrote a revised version of his biography Herinneringen aan een lyrisch trompettist, published in 1989. He translated it into English as: Chet Baker, his life and music (Aspekt, 2017). De Valk mentions Baker’s addiction problems, but does not make them any bigger or more interesting than they are. According to De Valk, Baker actually made much better music in his latter days than in his earlier years. With fewer notes, he could say more. De Valk gives plausible reasons why Baker was not so well-liked in America: for the conservative jazz lover, he was too introverted and possessed too few show business qualities; for progressive music lovers, in a period of increasing awareness around the roots of jazz, he simply had the wrong skin colour.
Filmmaker Bruce Weber claims that the music Baker played in his documentary was the last one Chet recorded. In reality, the prolific trumpeter recorded 20 more albums after that. At the end of his book, Jeroen de Valk placed a nice overview of the 250 records Chet Baker made and cherry-picked the best ones.
A year before his death, Baker combined the power of his early years with the depth of maturity during his performances in Japan. Drummer John Engels (1935) joined the quartet and still speaks emotionally about that tour: ‘Chet made me think differently about music. He played with an intensity you only find in the very greatest. He made music with warmth and love. When things went well, I was the happiest person in the world.’
American cool-jazz trombonist and writer Mike Zwerin (1930 – 2010), remained a persistent Baker enthusiast. He described his colleague’s playing as follows: ‘Chet Baker reached a place in our minds where music turns into religion. Other trumpeters try to overwhelm you, to play as fast as possible, to collapse the walls of Jericho while blaring. Baker built new walls. He needed them as protection.’
Chet Baker – Let’s Get Lost, (120 minutes, 1988), Bruce Weber
Album recommendations:
The Best of Chet Baker Sings – Pacific, 1953-1956
Quartet – Pacific, 1956
Chet Baker in Tokyo – Evidence, 1987
