Chet Baker Timeline

Chet Baker 22

1929 Chet Baker born in Yale, Oklahoma Chesney Henry Baker is born on 23 December 1929 in Yale, Oklahoma. The family moves to Glendale, California in 1940. His father plays guitar and banjo and encourages his musical interest. Chet begins on trombone at school before switching to trumpet at thirteen. He is largely self-taught -- he learns to read music only partially and relies throughout his career on an extraordinarily acute ear and a natural physical command of the trumpet that formal training cannot entirely explain.
1946 – 1951 Army years -- discovers jazz in the barracks Baker enlists in the US Army at 16, lying about his age. He is assigned to a military band in Berlin where he first hears bebop recordings and is electrified. During his second army stint at the Presidio in San Francisco, he plays in the Sixth Army Band and begins sitting in at local jazz clubs. The West Coast jazz scene he encounters in 1950-51 is the seedbed of what becomes West Coast Cool -- the style he will help define.
1951 Charlie Parker selects Baker for his West Coast quartet In 1951, Charlie Parker -- the greatest alto saxophonist in jazz history -- arrives in Los Angeles and needs a local trumpet player. Baker auditions and Parker selects him immediately. Playing with Parker is Baker's most formative musical experience. Bird tells people Baker is the best trumpet player he has ever heard. It is an extraordinary endorsement from the most revered figure in modern jazz, and it opens every door in the West Coast jazz scene to the unknown 21-year-old from Oklahoma.
1952 Joins Gerry Mulligan Quartet -- the pianoless quartet Gerry Mulligan forms a pianoless quartet in Los Angeles in 1952 -- bass, drums, baritone sax and trumpet -- in which the two horn players improvise counterpoint without the harmonic guidance of a piano. Baker joins as the trumpet player. The ensemble's recordings for Pacific Jazz Records are immediately revelatory: Baker's cool, melodic trumpet weaves around Mulligan's baritone in a musical conversation of extraordinary intimacy. The Mulligan-Baker quartet is the defining sound of West Coast Cool jazz.
1952 "My Funny Valentine" -- the defining recording The Mulligan-Baker quartet records Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart's 'My Funny Valentine' in August 1952. Baker's trumpet solo -- melodic, unhurried, vulnerable and perfectly shaped -- is one of the most celebrated instrumental performances in jazz history. The recording establishes Baker's signature style: a cool, lyrical tone with no vibrato, phrasing that sounds like speech rather than technique, and an emotional directness that bypasses sophistication to touch something more essential. Baker records 'My Funny Valentine' dozens of times over the rest of his career. None surpasses the original.
1953 – 1954 Baker begins singing -- an accidental vocalist Baker begins singing on his recordings almost by accident in 1953 -- initially reluctantly, at the insistence of record producer Richard Bock of Pacific Jazz. His vocal style mirrors his trumpet playing: intimate, slightly nasal, melodically pure and emotionally exposed in a way that seems to bypass technique entirely. He sounds like a man singing to himself rather than to an audience. Frank Sinatra dismisses him; his audiences are devoted. His vocal recordings become as celebrated as his instrumental work.
1953 Down Beat poll -- beats Miles Davis Baker wins the Down Beat magazine readers poll for most popular new jazz trumpet star in 1953, defeating Miles Davis -- who had already been recording for five years. The achievement reflects the extraordinary impact Baker makes in a single year. He is simultaneously the hottest trumpet player in jazz and one of its most photographed faces: young, blond and beautiful in a way that no jazz musician before him has been. The confluence of musical genius and physical beauty makes Baker a cultural phenomenon.
1954 Chet Baker Sings -- Pacific Jazz 'Chet Baker Sings,' released by Pacific Jazz in 1954, becomes one of the best-selling jazz vocal albums ever made. Baker's readings of standard songs -- 'The Thrill Is Gone,' 'But Not for Me,' 'Time After Time' -- are notable for their directness and lack of artifice. He sings with no vibrato, no showmanship and no distance between himself and the lyric. The album sells to audiences far beyond the jazz market, including teenagers attracted by Baker's image and the romantic melancholy of his voice. It is the commercial peak of his early career.
1955 – 1959 Heroin addiction takes hold Baker becomes addicted to heroin in the mid-1950s -- a trajectory shared by many jazz musicians of his generation. The addiction will define the rest of his life: it costs him his physical beauty, his teeth, his freedom and his reputation. It also, paradoxically, seems to deepen the melancholy that gives his music its emotional power. Baker never seriously attempts to separate his music from his addiction -- they are, for him, aspects of the same self. Charlie Parker, his mentor, dies of drug and alcohol complications in 1955 at 34.
1959 Moves to Europe -- Italy Baker moves to Europe in 1959, settling initially in Italy -- attracted by enthusiastic audiences, relative tolerance of his drug use and lower cost of living. He records prolifically in Italy and performs across Europe. European jazz audiences revere American jazz musicians in a way that American audiences rarely match. For Baker, Europe offers a kind of freedom from the tensions of the American jazz scene, even as his addiction follows him everywhere.
1960 – 1961 Imprisoned in Italy -- narcotics charges Baker is arrested on narcotics charges in Italy and imprisoned in Lucca in 1960-61. He serves approximately a year in Italian prisons and is subsequently deported. The imprisonment triggers a period of intense instability: he is banned from performing in Germany, France and England at various points due to drug convictions. He drifts between countries, recording when he can and using whenever he can. The glamorous West Coast Cool figure of 1952-54 is now a fugitive addict moving through a shrinking world.
1962 – 1965 Return to the US -- the scene has moved on Baker returns to the United States in 1962-63, but the American jazz scene has moved on. Miles Davis has released Kind of Blue; John Coltrane is exploring modal and free jazz; Ornette Coleman has redefined the avant-garde. Baker's cool lyricism seems old-fashioned to younger audiences. He records sporadically and performs in small clubs. His drug use and legal problems make him unreliable and difficult to book. He returns to Europe, which remains his primary base for the rest of his life.
1966 Teeth knocked out -- the trumpet falls silent In 1966, Baker's teeth are knocked out -- he claims in a mugging in San Francisco, though some accounts suggest the violence was connected to a drug debt. The loss of his teeth is catastrophic for a trumpet player: the embouchure depends entirely on the physical structure of the mouth. Without his teeth, Baker cannot play. For nearly three years he effectively disappears from the jazz world, living in poverty and working occasional manual labour jobs. The recovery that follows is one of the most remarkable in music history.
1968 – 1973 Learning to play again with dentures After nearly three years unable to play, Baker painstakingly relearns the trumpet with dentures -- an almost impossible task, since false teeth provide no reliable feedback for embouchure control. Most brass players who lose their natural teeth retire. Baker, through sheer determination and decades of muscle memory, rebuilds his technique. By 1973 he is performing again. His sound has changed -- slightly darker, less effortlessly beautiful -- but the melodic intelligence and emotional directness remain intact. The comeback is his most impressive achievement.
1974 Carnegie Hall -- return to New York Baker performs at Carnegie Hall in New York in 1974 -- a symbolic return to the American jazz mainstream after years of European exile. The concert is a critical success and introduces Baker to a new generation of American jazz fans. Critics who had written him off are forced to reassess: the playing is not what it was in 1952, but it is still extraordinary. The Carnegie Hall performance begins a gradual rehabilitation of Baker's American reputation that accelerates through the late 1970s.
1977 You Cant Go Home Again -- with Paul Desmond Baker records 'You Can't Go Home Again' for CTI Records in 1977 -- one of his finest late albums, featuring Paul Desmond in his final studio recording. Desmond and Baker, both purveyors of cool lyrical jazz with a melancholy edge, make an ideal pairing. Desmond dies shortly after the recording sessions. The album is an elegiac masterpiece of late-period cool jazz -- two consummate melodists in twilight, playing with the relaxed authority of musicians who have nothing left to prove.
1981 Elvis Costello -- "Almost Blue" Elvis Costello writes 'Almost Blue' in 1981 in direct tribute to Chet Baker -- a song whose title references the emotional quality of Baker's music. Costello records it on his country album 'Almost Blue.' The song introduces Baker to a generation of rock and new wave listeners. Baker's influence on popular music -- on the intimacy and vulnerability of vocal performance -- extends far beyond jazz. Costello, k.d. lang and many others cite him as a primary influence on their approach to the microphone.
1982 – 1986 ECM period -- finest late recordings Baker records a series of outstanding albums for ECM Records in the early-to-mid 1980s -- including 'The Touchstone' (1982) and live recordings from Tokyo and Europe. ECM's recording aesthetic, with its emphasis on space, acoustic clarity and emotional restraint, suits Baker perfectly. These recordings demonstrate that Baker, despite everything his life has cost him, remains one of the most distinctive improvisers in jazz -- harmonically richer and rhythmically more sophisticated than the young man who recorded My Funny Valentine in 1952.
1987 "Lets Get Lost" -- Bruce Weber documentary Filmmaker Bruce Weber shoots 'Let's Get Lost' -- a documentary portrait of Chet Baker -- in 1987. The film, released posthumously in 1989, is one of the great jazz documentaries: a deeply ambivalent portrait of a man whose beauty has been consumed by time and addiction, who still plays with transcendent grace, and who cannot account for the damage he has done to the people who have loved him. Baker is interviewed, performs, and talks about his life with a detachment that is simultaneously charming and devastating. The film is nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary.
1988 Last performances -- Amsterdam, May 1988 Baker's final performances are in Amsterdam in the days before his death. His physical appearance has been ravaged by decades of drug use: his face deeply lined, his body thin. But when he plays, something essential remains intact. He performs his final concert on 12 May 1988 -- the night before his death. Those who heard him describe a performance of extraordinary beauty and sadness, as if Baker knew something his audience did not.
1988 Chet Baker dies in Amsterdam On 13 May 1988, Chet Baker's body is found on the pavement below the window of his room at the Hotel Prins Hendrik in Amsterdam. He is 58. The cause of death is blunt force trauma consistent with a fall. Whether he fell, jumped or was pushed has never been definitively established. He had cocaine and heroin in his system. He leaves behind a body of recordings of incomparable beauty, three former wives, several children, and a myth as large as any in jazz -- the beautiful boy who fell and kept falling, and who played like an angel throughout.
1989 – present Legacy -- the most romantic sound in jazz Chet Baker's legacy is the sound of romantic melancholy expressed with perfect economy. Bruce Weber's posthumous documentary 'Let's Get Lost' (1989) cements his mythological status. His recordings -- particularly 'My Funny Valentine,' 'Almost Blue,' 'But Not for Me' and 'Time After Time' -- remain among the most listened-to in jazz. He appears on the soundtrack of countless films seeking to evoke longing, beauty and loss. His name is synonymous with a particular quality of feeling that has no better word than his own music.