#dapper american

The Dapper American #4 - Chet Baker (1929-1988)

Jazz historian David Gelly described the promise of Chet Baker's early career as "James Dean, Sinatra, and Bix, rolled into one."

Born in Oklahoma in 1929, Chesney "Chet" Henry Baker grew up in Los Angeles. He had a deep and instinctive ear for music, playing trumpet in high school, army, and junior college bands; in 1949, when he heard the Miles Davis 78s that would later be collected as “The Birth of the Cool,” Baker “connected with that style so passionately that he felt he had found the light.” 

His break came quickly, when, in the spring of 1952, he was chosen at an audition to play a series of West Coast dates with Charlie Parker, making his debut with the famed saxophonist at the Tiffany Club in Los Angeles. That summer, he began playing in the Gerry Mulligan Quartet, that attracted attention during an engagement at the Haig nightclub and through recordings on the newly formed Pacific Jazz Records, beginning with the 10" LP Gerry Mulligan Quartet, which featured Baker's famous rendition of "My Funny Valentine."

Baker had become addicted to heroin in the 1950s and had been incarcerated briefly on several occasions, but his drug habit only began to interfere with his career significantly in the 1960s. Although he remained an addict for much of his life, Baker began to control his heroin addiction by taking methadone, and eventually mounted a comeback that culminated in a prominent New York club engagement in 1973 and a reunion concert with Gerry Mulligan at Carnegie Hall in 1974.