Chet Baker In New York

By Paul Casey

I was drawn to Chet Baker in the same way as so many others: By his voice. A copy of the essential compilation, The Best of Chet Baker Sings, was my companion on the kinds of nights where only a special performer can turn solipsism into artful indulgence. It was not a long haul until his instrumentals joined his whisper voice and became the backdrop to these low and human moments.

As was my wont, this journey took strange turns. One of the first of his largely instrumental albums I bought in a House of Jazz in Chicago: 1974’s She Was Too Good For Me. The Complete 1953-1954 Studio Recordings followed, along with Chet Baker and Strings, a vision of L.A. and California, contradictory in its light and shade, and smooth as all hell. In Baker’s trumpet playing, there was a sadness, a doomed longing that expressed something which not even his perfect voice could.

Chet Baker In New York, originally released in 1958, is an album rich in these qualities, yet perhaps owing to the location and musicians involved, one which comes off as harder than the character of West Coast Jazz which has defined him. It is loneliness before the dropout. Fever dancing. Bluesbebopgone! Fair weather’s comin’. This is in large part thanks to Baker’s bandmates.

Paul Chambers on bass, a member of the Miles Davis Quintet, and featured on such historic recordings as ‘Round About Midnight and Kind of Blue, would again work with Baker on 1959’s classic Chet. The formidable Philly Joe Jones on drums, also a member of the Davis Quintet, brings to Chet Baker in New York much of its force and power. Al Haig, who had played with Baker’s mentor Charlie Parker and was featured on Miles Davis’s Birth of the Cool, is on piano duties. Johnny Griffin, known for his work with Art Blakey and Thelonious Monk was another player of the Hard Bop style, and is present on tenor saxophone on three tracks.

The long shadows and man-made stars of New York are nowhere more explicit than on the top down, hard driving “Hotel 49.” Late nights, coffee nights. Both Chambers and Philly Joe give the city its motor. Raging, crazy, walk all night. Stand around on the corner and wait for your friend to come home from night shift, so you can sleep on his couch. Except you don’t sleep and instead go to the diner down the street and wait for the bars to open. Even if this album had not been recorded in New York, it would still move with its energy. “When Lights Are Low,” the city still speaks.

There is that romanticism too, which drew men and women to Baker in such frequent acts of swooning. The sweet desire of “Polka Dots and Moonbeams” is the dream lover tale, which Chet Baker was born to tell. His playing here is of a beaten but hopeful love, it is of the same character as “I Fall In Love Too Easily” or “But Not For Me” in wordless form. “Blue Thoughts” are Chet’s thoughts. Here with Johnny Griffin on tenor sax. I loved you, I did, music.

This 2011 remaster sounds great, although I will admit to not being an audiophile, so I am unable to direct you to its superiority over the earlier version in this regard. One of the definite improvements over the earlier CDs, however, is the rearrangement of the bonus tracks. A rather annoying aspect of the Riverside CDs was the strange inclusion of unreleased cuts within the album proper. On the original Know What I Mean? by Cannonball Adderley, for instance, we are treated to two takes of “Who Cares?” and “Know What I Mean?” side by side. Here, Original Jazz Classics have wisely chosen to separate the original album and the bonus tracks. They have also included extra unreleased cuts on albums where material is available.

Chet Baker In New York is a meeting of two different approaches to Jazz. It is by turns sweet and melodious, fierce and fast, and downbeat and downtrodden. It is, then, Chet Baker through and through. If you have been soothed by the seeming innocence of the man with the unstoppable cool in his vocal outings, then you will find sympathy here. And heart. And damn good music.

Chet Baker In New York was released by Concord Music Group on June 14. For more on the Original Jazz Classics program, please visit their website.