Unsung scattered musings on Chet Baker Sings

i have to say.. chet baker sings which was originally released in 1956 or 1957 has really got to be one of the greatest jazz vocal albums nay JAZZ nay ALBUMS of all time.. absolutely wondrous....bewitching... so simple but so gorgeous and affecting... but enough with the platitudes.. i'm listening to a heavily banged up second pressing or first pressing on world pacific (the real first pressing was on pacific jazz THANKS orpheus records for nothing!)... this is one of those records that is just SO tough to get in the original...

remember the talented mr ripley? this album was laying on a table in a scene meant to show just how "cool" the guy who gets killed by damon was...

chet baker what to say bout him? seems like a real hard luck story..how would you like to be the biggest thing since rice a roonie when you are just entering your 20s .. selected best jazz trumpeter or vocalist etc.. and then as the years went by .. and very quickly.. he just wasn't "in" anymore.... heroin takes over your life.. next thing you know you throw yourself out your hotel window.. anybody who's seen pictures of chet in the 1970s can attest to just how much heroin consumed him.his face in those pictures is horrifying gaunt.. david wilcox wrote a great song called "chet baker's unsung swan song" and introduced it on a live version i had on a radio station live comp cd "..this is what i imagine chet baker must have been feeling /thiking as he contemplated throwing himself out the balcony" ..or some such..i paraphrase and the memory gets a bit hazey.... but anyways i guess people loved the chet baker boy or very young man..but he wasn't the greatest singer or the greatest trumpet player by all accounts... but on chet baker sings there is this incredibly affecting-you cannot help but me moved- vulnerability of a very young passionate person who is feeling love the way you can only feel it those few times if you're lucky...

and what to say about russ freeman who plays piano on all these tracks and i think had a lot to do with the music.. great just great playing behind chet.. he really underpins the songs... and what songs! chet really picked some great stuff here.. there are songs by Hoagy Carmichael (I get along without you very well), Sinatra's songwriting team of Sammy Cahn and J(ules?) Styne (Time after time... songs by jimmy van huesen...gershwin (but not for me)

but perhaps whats most striking about chet baker is that in a world where there was a Frank Sinatra and there were many incredible singers its Chet Baker's versions of these songs which will stick in your head....at least thats the way i hear it...and Chet Baker was not a singer per se.. you get the sense he's a guy just like you and me that got up in front of the mike on a lark... now maybe thats putting it a bit strongly... and Chet Baker was a great singer.. just not in a classical sort of way.. he gets by on his personality or his person...if that hopefully makes any sense...he doesn't have the greatest singing chops but the way he sings is what makes it so great..and its his way..

i always thought it was so cool how elvis costello who had covered my funny valentine (a song forever associated with chet who , again had the definitive version though its not on this album) recruited chet to play the trumpet on his wonderful shipbuilding....i think he pretty much wrote that song so he could get chet to play on it.... because i'm sure like me he heard chet baker singing and thought "gold jerry..gold"... this stuff just sticks in your head..its that good....

its always striking to me that the young chet baker on these sides just looks to be a completely different man from the gaunt heroin addict on the later album jackets..that guy is scary looking... but such is life.. it ain't always the american dream.....still the joy chet brings people year after year with these performances is reason enough for him to smile wherever he may be tonight regardless of whatever