Chet Baker: A life among demons

By GRAHAM REID

Elsewhere

Trumpeter Chet Baker's death in 1988 was tragic - but at 59 he'd been lucky to have lived so long.

A brilliant stylist whose work with Gerry Mulligan's piano-less quartet in the early-50s and recordings in Paris shortly after are worth serious investigation, he modelled himself on Miles Davis at his most cool.

Although his trumpet rarely explored much beyond a diffident mid-range, he was an accomplished and distinctive stylist.

Baker was also a beautiful boy. With high cheek bones and moody good looks, and as a singer whose smoky style breathed seduction, he was James Dean recast as a Sinatra-style crooner. If he'd been born in the 70s, these days he'd be in Calvin Klein ads. He looked jazz as much as played it.

Reviled by jazz writers who were dismissive of his singing and drew the inevitable comparisons between this West Coast trumpeter and Davis of the East Coast, Baker's life was also plagued by demons of his own making.

It's said he learned to play trumpet in a fortnight, and that his singing came equally effortlessly. Perhaps because of the ease of his accomplishments he became a spendthrift of his talents and didn't respect them. He certainly didn't respect himself and developed a smack habit of gigantic proportions.

Baker's life had all the elements of a terrific James Dean-like live fast-die young story. Except he lived.

He lived to do time, loose his teeth during a beating in 68, look in the mirror and see his youthful beauty destroyed by the ravages of his habit, and then in May 12 years ago, fall to his death from a hotel room in Amsterdam.

Baker's style and image undergoes periodic revivals: Greg Johnson modelled himself on Baker in the first few years of his career, and Elvis Costello wrote Almost Blue in the manner of Baker's atmospheric jazz-noir style and had the trumpeter play on Shipbuilding.

Bruce Weber's 89 homo-erotic documentary Let's Get Lost put the ferociously photogenic young Baker on screen for a new, hip young audience attracted as much, you suspect, by heroin chic as the jazz Baker played.

Baker is back again, being paid sensitive homage on Chattin' With Chet (Verve/Universal) **** by German trumpeter Till Bronner.

Young, good-looking Chet-like Bronner and his band effectively take aspects of Baker's signature style (wispy muted trumpet, the unadorned singing style), play material associated with Baker (My Funny Valentine) and pay tribute in the lyrics of Have You Met Chet? and the title track.

They also bring in some snappy contemporary touches: turntable scratching on You Don't Know What Love Is and Gershwin's But Not For Me, jazz-rapper Supernatural on a version of Cole Porter's Ev'ry Time We Say Goodbye, which seems included to alienate Porter aficionados, and Baker himself is sampled on the title track to create a Baker-Bronner duet.

It's going too far to suggest that if Baker had appeared in the 90s he might have sounded like this. He didn't have quite this much musical curiosity or energy, and Bronner's trumpet playing is considerably tougher than Baker's translucent and eventually effete tones.

So this is a tribute which doesn't simply mimic Baker or stand in awe of the legacy, and if old-time Baker fans quibble that Bronner neither has Baker's trumpet or vocal charm then fair enough. That's true.

But the old albums are out there - Baker's catalogue is astonishingly extensive given the troubled life he led - and this could bring Baker to yet another new audience.

And there isn't a whiff of heroin chic clouding the issue this time either. For that alone we should be truly grateful.

Jazzland Remixed (Jazzland/Universal) *** could also bring the DJ/clubland audience into the orbit of jazz. Over 10 tracks, half a dozen remixers (most successfully the Chilluminati team of Per Martinsen and Nick Sillitoe) bring a cool, nightclub ambience to tracks from recent albums by contemporary Eurojazzer Bugge Wesseltoft, who also appears to be the driving force here.

It's languid, late-in-the-evening stuff which sounds effortless, sticks to the middle range, is of studied restraint ...

Yeah, Chet Baker might have enjoyed being around for this one.