Chet Baker, misjudged?

[fasstrack]

23 hours ago, duaneiac said:

Welcome to the modern world, where image is everything, talent is secondary and media exploitation is the only way to fame and fortune, no matter what field one pursues.  I wouldn't fault this film in particular for being "exploitative".  Has any Hollywood biography of a musician, be it W. A. Mozart, Billie Holiday, Patsy Cline,  Ray Charles, Brian Wilson  etc., completely adequately explored the musical end of things?  Movies are not illustrated lectures, they are entertainments.

Could one not argue that Chet Baker himself cashed in on the "junkie-outlaw image" for a long part of his career? 

Any one who saw Let's Get Lost and was inspired to buy the soundtrack album at least added a very good Chet Baker CD to their collection, so that's a good thing.

Can't answer your first question. Sure, or I suppose, to the rest.

I didn't know that documentaries were 'entertainments'. Entertaining, sure, hopefully...

Edited September 3, 2016 by fasstrack

[John L]

I'm happy to see this thread revived.  This is the thread that fostered my appreciation for Chet Baker.  The recommendations Brownie and Jim R made for me on page 1 of this thread took me on a journey that I never came back from.     

[ArtSalt]

On ‎02‎/‎09‎/‎2016 at 8:19 PM, duaneiac said:

Any one who saw Let's Get Lost and was inspired to buy the soundtrack album at least added a very good Chet Baker CD to their collection, so that's a good thing.

A tad light on the horn playing, but a good entry point into the music of Chet.

[Late]

I thought this board, and this thread in particular, might appreciate fourteen lines on Chet Baker.

[Joe]

10 hours ago, Late said:

I thought this board, and this thread in particular, might appreciate fourteen lines on Chet Baker.

Thanks for sharing that!

 

[JSngry]

Same.

[Bluesnik]

On 29/08/2006 at 6:53 AM, Soul Stream said:

I just got done listening to "Chet Is Back"

That album is also one of my favorite Baker albums. With top shelf European musicians (Rene Thomas and Bobby Jaspar among them) and recorded in Rome in the normally weak Baker 60s it is very good.

[Guy Berger]

Thanks @Late.  Great poem.

[Late]

On 2/3/2018 at 5:34 PM, Guy Berger said:

Thanks @Late.  Great poem.

Thank you!

[Quasimado]

7 hours ago, Late said:

Thank you!

Chet knew what he wanted from an early age. I don't think he had any regrets - the best of his music makes that clear.   Q

[mjzee]

I just stumbled across this - sounds plausible:

https://www.kcrw.com/music/articles/how-chet-baker-really-died

[MomsMobley]

On 8/29/2006 at 0:53 AM, Soul Stream said:

I just got done listening to "Chet Is Back" and, like many times before...am reminded just how engaging he is. Over the years, his music is something I return to often. Junkie-dom and Milesian-white-hope shit aside...I can't help but think that Chet Baker is a bad mf and had a musical element that is missing in even the greatest of the great.

Chet Baker + Duke Jordan -dom = excellence!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qGkDtkn8Qms

 

[Joe]

This one is also quite nice... intersting to hear Chet Return to one of the Zieff/Twardzik pieces after so many years. 

 

[Chuck Nessa]

Chet b ok

 

[soulpope]

2 hours ago, Joe said:

This one is also quite nice... intersting to hear Chet Return to one of the Zieff/Twardzik pieces after so many years. 

 

With Jean-Louis Rassinfosse + Philip Catherine likely the best incarnation of a Chet Baker Trio ...

[Gheorghe]

I have not heard his name until I read a Jazz Podium interview with him in 1978, the famous German jazz expert Gudrun Endress was doing the interview with him. 
Sure there were questions about his past, but Chet was very articulate on that interview and made interesting statements and announced that he had overcome the drug addiction (maybe he tried for a hot minute). 

But shortly after the interview I saw him live with a trio and really liked it, even if at that point I missed a drum set but later understood that he preferred to play without drums. 
I saw him many times from 1978-1988 (with the exception of two gigs where he didn´t show up  in 1983 and 1984) . 

And besides that, he had played much with the great Austrian guitarist Karl Ratzer (they also recorded two LPs in Paris in 1980). Chet and Ratzer played a duo gig at "Jazz Spelunke" too. 

[BillF]

On 23/07/2020 at 11:05 PM, mjzee said:

I just stumbled across this - sounds plausible:

https://www.kcrw.com/music/articles/how-chet-baker-really-died

Interesting article.

I have met the last man to play with Chet - Dutch pianist Rob Van Bavel, who was a regular at sessions at my friend Malcolm Frazer's house.

It is said that on his last day Chet stopped by the club where Rob's trio was playing, sat in for a few numbers, went to meet his connection and returned to his hotel - from which he never re-emerged.

Here's Rob at Malcolm's:

 

[sidewinder]

I always remember an episode of BBC ‘Sounds of Jazz’ back in the 70s (1977-ish) where he was due to be interviewed by Peter Clayton in London and never turned up, having gone AWOL in the city. As I recall it, not much had been heard from him over here for many years, he had recently made a recording comeback and the radio interview was eagerly anticipated.

Edited January 23, 2022 by sidewinder

[Rabshakeh]

On 22/01/2022 at 7:04 AM, Gheorghe said:

I have not heard his name until I read a Jazz Podium interview with him in 1978, the famous German jazz expert Gudrun Endress was doing the interview with him. 
Sure there were questions about his past, but Chet was very articulate on that interview and made interesting statements and announced that he had overcome the drug addiction (maybe he tried for a hot minute). 

Was he really so low profile in the late 1970s? I think I had heard of Chet Baker before I heard of Miles Davis, just from seeing his iconic album covers. As a child of 90s, he was among the most high profile of all jazz musicians.

For some reason I and my friends had picked up a completely skewed version of Chet Baker's life story, where he was a lightweight / hearththrob record company creation whose sexuality the 1950s studios were desperate to keep hidden, and who died tragically young and beautiful. I have no idea where we got that from - obviously the story is James Dean's but why we transferred it to Baker I don't know. I was around 28 when I first realised the much weirder reality.

Edited January 23, 2022 by Rabshakeh

[Niko]

I wasn't around but it seems he was fairly low profile from the mid-60s to the mid-70s, with him being in bad shape and his music not fitting into the times that well either... in 1974 came the CTI album, and from there it took a few more years until he started to constantly tour Europe with surprisingly good bands, recording dozen of albums, many of which are great... and somehow, it's also not hard to see how Baker's brand of chamber jazz could work in a market where Jarrett's 1975 Köln Concert was a really big deal... (while Baker didn't really have an answer to, say, Bitches Brew). It's not so clear where to put the beginning of that late Baker phase but the 1978 band with Phil Markowitz feels like one logical starting date to me...

[Gheorghe]

21 hours ago, Rabshakeh said:

Was he really so low profile in the late 1970s? I think I had heard of Chet Baker before I heard of Miles Davis, just from seeing his iconic album covers. As a child of 90s, he was among the most high profile of all jazz musicians.

For some reason I and my friends had picked up a completely skewed version of Chet Baker's life story, where he was a lightweight / hearththrob record company creation whose sexuality the 1950s studios were desperate to keep hidden, and who died tragically young and beautiful. I have no idea where we got that from - obviously the story is James Dean's but why we transferred it to Baker I don't know. I was around 28 when I first realised the much weirder reality.

Well in the late 70´s he got top billing here in Europe, but before his comeback and all his recordings mostly for Steeplechase and later Timeless and other labels , he was unknown at least to people of my generation who were part of the current scene or who were budding musicians. 

So let´s say we first heard him when he was billed on all those festivals, because from 1978 on he got a lot of gigs over here in Europe. And almost all of us knew him only from that moment on, since for all jazz buddies I knew, but also for mentors of that time, so called "Westcoast Jazz" was not really mentioned. 

Most of the fans of Westcoast jazz, and fans of Brubeck were people from the generation of my father. My father never liked "jazz" (he listened only to more difficult classical music like Beethoven, Wagner and so on) , but some of his colleages at University  would like   Shorty Rogers and Brubeck etc ...,  but didn´t know much about bebop, east coast hard bop, modal, free and electric jazzrock . 
 

[Shrdlu]

This is a good performance, from his later years. He's a bit flat, but ignore that.

 

[Gheorghe]

This is also a very good performance. 

It has our Austrian Star Guitarist Karl Ratzer. Baker and Ratzer also played as a duo at "Jazz Spelunke" around that time. 
 

Edited January 25, 2022 by Gheorghe

[Quasimado]

"Dee's Dilemma" from "Live at the Moonlight" (1985), Macerata, Italy - Michel Grallier (piano), Massimo Moriconi (bass)

[Joe]

1 hour ago, Quasimado said:

"Dee's Dilemma" from "Live at the Moonlight" (1985), Macerata, Italy - Michel Grallier (piano), Massimo Moriconi (bass)

Nice! Thanks!