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Archival Finds: Dave Brubeck, Bill Evans and Chet Baker
by Jerome Wilson
Here are three releases of newly discovered material by iconic jazz musicians from the '50s and '60s. Two fall in line with the leaders' established legacies while the third presents its subject in surprising company. The Dave Brubeck Quartet Time OutTakes Brubeck Editions 2020 This CD consists of previously unreleased takes from the recording sessions for Dave Brubeck's classic album, Time Out (Columbia, 1959). Most of these versions stick to the ...
read moreChet Baker / Wolfgang Lackerschmid: Quintet Session
by Chris May
Quintet Session is the second of two albums the trumpeter Chet Baker recorded in Stuttgart, Germany with the vibraphonist Wolfgang Lackerschmid in 1979. It was originally released as Chet Baker / Wolfgang Lackerschmid (Sandra Music, 1980). The combination worked well on the first session, which produced the lovely Ballads For Two (Sandra Music, 1979), and almost as well on the second session, nine months later. The fly in the ointment second time out was Baker's German tour ...
read moreChet Baker: An Alternative Top Ten Albums To Get Lost In
by Chris May
Chet Baker was born to a farmer's daughter and a hard-drinking, weed-smoking singer and guitarist in a Western Swing band in Yale, Oklahoma in 1929. Like many Okies, the family fared badly during the Great Depression but did a little better after moving to Glendale, California in 1939. Largely self-taught as a trumpeter, Baker honed his skills playing in an army band after volunteering for military service in the mid 1940s. By the turn of the decade, he was making ...
read moreCTI Records: Ten Tasty Albums With No Added Sugar (Almost)
by Chris May
Few jazz producers divide opinion as much as Creed Taylor. He is a hero to many and a villain to as many more. His fans love him for his high production values. His detractors accuse him of dumbing jazz down with excessively sweetened orchestrations and other sales-oriented compromises. Nowhere is the dispute more heated than over Taylor's output for his own CTI label, which spanned jazz-funk, fusion, hard bop and post-bop straight-ahead. Taylor cut his teeth in ...
read moreBruce Guthrie: Remembering Chet Baker
by Nenette Evans
I first met the Baker family at Chet's funeral back in 1988. I took my kids out of school and went with my partner, Fonje, to the Los Angeles Cemetery. I had heard about the funeral from our local jazz station and with a big sense of duty to Chet Baker's memory, headed north on the 405 freeway. I remember thinking, this is huge, everyone will be there, everyone in jazz. Having known virtually nothing about the family or all ...
read moreCraft Recording's "Chet" is a Rare Win for Baker
by Patrick Burnette
"There's a little white cat out here who's going to eat you up." —Charlie Parker (to Miles Davis) Chet Baker and Miles Davis. Two trumpet players born three years apart. Both unusually handsome and slight of build. Both lacking, as trumpeters, the qualities most often associated with those brass alphas of the jazz world--power, speed, stratospheric range. Both associated, in their early years, with Charlie Parker. Both boasting incredibly prolific recording careers, with dozens of leader dates ...
read moreChet Baker: Chet
by Karl Ackermann
In the early 1950s, the rural Oklahoman Chet Baker established prominent connections in the jazz world; gigs with Charlie Parker and Stan Getz led to his first recordings. The trappings of both musicians' circles were dusted with heroin and Baker's career breaks coincided with his introduction to the disease that would stifle his musical development and kill him in thirty-something years. The Legendary Riverside Albums represents an output that some felt was Baker's best. It's an assessment that's debatable, as ...
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