CHET BAKER, PRINCE OF COOL March Jazz Cafe Performance

Chet Baker

There will be blood” said the Oilmen, after the plains had been cleared of Indians and

buffalo, and Henry Ford launched the Model T. The biggest gusher of all wasn’t in Texas

but near Yale, Oklahoma, where Chet Baker was born in 1929, as his dad Chet Senior

and mom Vera played Western Swing music in the saloons. By 1940 the wells had gone

dry. The Yale population crashed by 90%, the bars fell silent, and the Baker family joined

the Beverly Hillbillies, heading west for a new life in LA.

With Chet’s background, it was no surprise that he was the star of his Glendale high

school band. From there he was drafted into the US Army and ended up in the 6th

Command orchestra at the Presidio, a luxury posting overlooking the Golden Gate

Bridge, in San Francisco, Capital of Beat, the final destination of Jack Kerouac’s epochal

“On The Road”. Chet would hang out at a late-night joint called Bop City, “No Squares

Allowed”, mixing with the likes of Lady Day, Satchmo, and Bird. Such was the crucible of

the Prince of Cool.

Chet got his big break when Charlie Parker picked him up for a West Coast tour in 1951.

From there he teamed up with Stan Getz and later Gerry Mulligan, framing the contours

of Cool Jazz - a soft, swing-oriented brand of post-bop. While with Mulligan’s Quartet,

Chet’s choirboy singing voice caught the ear of the public, who in 1954 voted him No 1

on West Coast star. Miles Davis had been jealously guarding the trumpet crown, and

after early collaborations, their relationship soured into bitter rivalry over the years.

The electric guitar was invented in 1950, but in the pop culture of 1955, the trumpet still

reigned supreme. With Chet’s combination of laid-back horn, seductive vocals, and

masculine beauty, he was a ready-made matinee idol and model. He played his first movie

role that year as a talented but doomed Koran War pilot, and quickly moved on to Italy’s

busy Cinecitta film scene for seven more films. He also did the “American in Paris”

thing, touring and recording extensively on the European continent.

Sad to say, in the courts of Princes, especially Cool ones, the Pusher Man is seldom far

from the throne. Chet early on acquired a narcotics habit that saw him deported from

one country after another. Back in LA, he lost his teeth in a violent disagreement over

drug debts, and it took him three years to recover his embouchure with dentures. But by

1977, Chet had pulled himself back from the abyss sufficiently to stage a comeback tour

of “Economic Miracle” Europe, which lasted long enough to generate another dozen

important records.

Despite Chet’s personal challenges, his work rate was prodigious, leaving a legacy of no

less than 143 albums. Yet he was a complex character and difficult to work with. He

didn’t like “noise”, or playing with drummers, easily “got an attitude”, and refused to

play if people were talking too loud. Fortunately for posterity, in 1986 an art school

photographer connected with him so well that a one-day cover shoot turned into a full-

length film biography in unvarnished black and white.

Two years later, Chet was again in Europe, working with the German NDR orchestra.

They found him on the street outside his Amsterdam hotel, with enough speedballs in

his arm for a game of pachinko. The movie, “Let’s Get Lost”, was released four months

later, an invaluable record of a stellar jazz life. His life and music inspired the March Jazz Cafe Performance - Chet Baker at Sands End Arts and Community Center. Link to 'Let's Get Lost' performed by Sherry Jazz Ensemble https://youtu.be/UWw3pSS8va4?si=6XWeYgTFB_CjSw1g