Jazz Articles about Chet Baker

About Chet Baker

Album Review

Jazz e cinema. Un connubio magnificamente documentato da questo confanetto, destinato ad attrarre l'interesse non solo dei fan di Chet Baker. C'è un gran lavoro dietro queste sei colonne sonore realizzate tra il 1958 ed il 1962 grazie alle splendide partiture di Piero Umiliani, tra pagine orchestrali di impianto rigorosamente jazz e raffinati ammiccamenti al pop. Oltre al solismo malinconico e trasognato di Baker, emerge superbamente il variopinto caleodoscopio del jazz italiano degli anni Sessanta. L'orchestra di ...

Getting Into Jazz

Chet Baker Quartet Featuring Russ Freeman

by Mark Barnett
April 26, 2016

Getting Started If you're new to jazz, go to our Getting Into Jazz primer for some hints on how to listen. CD Capsule Iconic West Coast jazz by the legendary trumpeter at the cusp of his career. Baker made a slew of recordings in his lifetime, but this is among the crème de la crème. Background Trumpeter Chet Baker rose to prominence in the mid-1950's and continued to ...

Book Review

Matthew Ruddick: Funny Valentine

by Maurizio Zerbo
September 23, 2014

Funny Valentine Matthew Ruddick Arcana Jazz 978-88-6231-346-9 2014 Sapientemente tradotta da Vincenzo Martorella, questa nuova biografia di Chet Baker muove dall'intento di riconsiderare in chiave meno pruriginosa la figura umana ed artistica del trombettista, scomparso tragicamente ad Amsterdam nel 1988. Avvalendosi di un rilevante corpus di prima (interviste) e seconda (libri ed articoli) mano, Matthew Ruddick si allontana dall'immagine di eroe maledetto, ingiustamente tracciata da James Gavin nel suo “La lunga notte ...

Book Review

Chet Baker: The Missing Years by Artt Frank

by C. Michael Bailey
March 24, 2014

Chet Baker: The Missing Years Artt Frank 234 Pages ISBN: # 978-0-9887687-4-1 BooksEndependent 2014 Baker attracts positive and negative criticism like a celebrity black hole--the artist as hero and antihero. When considering Baker, you consider no one else. From “On The Banks of the Jabbok with Chet Baker," All About Jazz, 2012. Since his death in 1988, trumpeter/vocalist Chet Baker has been the subject of three biographies that ...

Reassessing

Chet Baker Plays The Best Of Lerner & Loewe

by C. Michael Bailey
July 26, 2013

Chet BakerChet Baker Plays The Best Of Lerner & LoeweOJC1959/2013 The newest round of re-releases/remasters from the Concord Music Group celebrate the 60th anniversary of Riverside Records. Singer and trumpeter Chet Baker's Chet Baker Plays The Best Of Lerner & Loewe joins Mulligan Meets Monk (OJC/Riverside, 1957/2013) in the label's birthday celebration. Plays The Best Of Lerner & Loewe can easily be considered a sequel and one half of a creative ...

Opinion

On the Banks of the Jabbok With Chet Baker

by C. Michael Bailey
September 30, 2012

When Yale professor Harold Bloom was interviewed by NPR shortly after publication of Jesus and Yahweh: The Names Divine (Riverhead, 2005), he was quite candid about his relationship with his own Judaism and Yahweh: Bloom: ... I may, as I say, lack trust in the covenant, but though I keep asking Yahweh to go away, I say so many times in this book, he won't go away. He haunts me. NPR: You really want Yahweh to ...

Book Review

Funny Valentine - The Story of Chet Baker

by Chris May
July 30, 2012

Funny Valentine: The Story of Chet BakerMatthew Ruddick828 pages, softbackISBN: 978-1-907732-71-3Melrose Books2012Grippingly written and meticulously researched, Matthew Ruddick's 828-page opus is the definitive biography of trumpeter and singer Chet Baker. More than that, it is a vivid account of the junkie subculture that ran through mid-to-late 20th century jazz, as seen through the incident-packed life of one of its most spectacular participants. The book combines some of the ...