Chet Baker

by Valk, Jeroen De; De Valk, Jerone

• ISBN13: 9781893163133
• ISBN10: 189316313X
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2000-06-01
• Publisher: Berkeley Hills Books

Summary

After years of absence, Chet Baker (1929-1988) returned to the limelight when filmmaker Bruce Weber documented his life in Let's Get Lost, just before his mysterious fatal fall from a hotel window in Amsterdam. Like many of his generation, Baker discovered jazz while playing in Army bands. He went farther than many, finding fame as both a distinctive balladeer and innovative trumpeter but becoming an alcoholic and heroin addict in the process.

Baker's early triumphs turned sour by the '60s, when he was in and out of jails and rehabs before finding some measure of peace through methadone. De Valk painstakingly documents Baker's scandals and successes in a powerful portrait of the tormented genius one critic called "a lyrical, self-taught improviser with a soft touch that seemed to kiss the notes as they flew by".

Table of Contents

preface	vii
chronology	ix
a routine burial: chet baker's death	1	(14)
a cowboy from oklahoma: chet's early years	15	(14)
the pianoless quartet: chet, mulligan and the West Coast scene	29	(22)
`a touch of genius': chet and russ freeman	51	(12)
a drama in paris: the first drug problems	63	(12)
the second european tour: a picaresque journey through clinics and jails	75	(20)
five toughs from san francisco: rock bottom	95	(12)
two weeks in the half note: the comeback	107	(16)
the high-class hobo: back in europe	123	(12)
in search of chet baker: the interview(s)	135	(22)
on tour: evert hekkema and wim wigt productions	157	(18)
in deepest concentration: in the studio	175	(10)
who cares? chet baker's last year, and his legacy	185	(16)
`as though it were his last time...': a lyric trumpeter	201	(16)
`quite a regular guy': colleagues and friends on chet baker the man	217	(8)
the recordings of chet baker: a select discography	225	(38)
chet baker's complete works: an overview	263	(26)
abbreviations	289	(1)
sources	290	(1)
index of names	291