Chet Baker: Last Great Concert On A Monday

In a career that lasted an odds-defying four decades, trumpeter and vocalist Chet Baker's signature sound was captured on around 20 live albums. The majority of these performances, covering the years 1952-1988, not surprisingly, fell on Thursdays through Sundays—good business days for jazz. But this previously unreleased live recording is different. None of the dozen patrons who came to Amersfoort's Jazz Cellar for Baker's concert on 25 April, 1988 could possibly have known that it was to be his last ever concert on a Monday.

This recording in The Netherlands is not to be confused with Chet Baker: The Last Great Concert (Enja, 1988), from April 28th, 1988, which fell on a Thursday (see?), or the unhelpfully titled The Great Last Concert Vol II (Enja, 1990), which is from the same April 28 session as The Last Great Concert. Nor has it anything to do with The Last Great Last Concert (Fancy-Fancy, 1992), an inferior bootleg that combines tracks from both the aforementioned albums, along with several songs from an earlier Saturday-night Rotterdam gig. For Baker completists it can be a minefield out there.

With more label-led obfuscation than the Russian propaganda machine could ever conjure up—surely a ploy to entice fools to part with their money time and again—it is reassuring to learn from renowned Baker archivist Simon Porter Liff, writing in the album's accompanying booklet, that this was indeed Baker's final gig on a Monday, which adds a layer of poignancy to the performance. But that is not all. Liff points out that Baker was actually born on a Monday, December 23, 1929—an uncanny coincidence that frames this concert as a closing of the circle, of sorts.

Liff is not alone in assigning this concert special significance. In a second essay, Aaron Spiel, author of 1000 Great Last Concerts (Doomdays, 2001) writes: "That Monday night, before a scant crowd, there was a particular melancholy in Baker's playing and singing, a sad but beautiful fragility. It was almost as if he knew that this would be his last concert on a Monday."

For the accompanying musicians, however, bassist Jan Jongbloed, drummer Piet Schrijvers and pianist Eddy Treijtel, students from the Amsterdam Conservatory, this was just another low-paid Monday-night gig to a painfully small crowd, albeit one with a jazz legend.

The set list is a typical one for Baker in his final period, with an emphasis on ballads—"All Blues," "My Funny Valentine," "I get Along Without You Very Well," "I Fall in Love Too Easily" etcetera. Is this a great concert for a Monday? Probably not. The Dutch musicians all have good hands, but they are no world beaters. Baker, on the other hand, sounds in good form, putting to the sword the stubbornly surviving myth that his playing and singing were poor in his final years.

The real surprise is the brief guest appearance towards the end of the set of Thys van Leer of progressive rock band Focus, who happened to be playing in nearby Hoogland. After some indistinct stage chat about what to play, Baker launches into the riff of "Hocus Pocus," the legendary Focus hit form 1972. Whether it is because his false teeth are failing him, or because he cannot play the trumpet for giggling, Baker loses a little steam, with van Leer stepping up on flute to steady the ship. Sadly, the recording is abruptly truncated around the 90-second mark of this collaboration, leaving it to our imaginations as to whether or not Baker joined van Leer in the yodeling section.

Earlier in the set, during a brief pause in play to whet his whistle, Baker is heard to say resignedly to his band: "Mondays, man!" Knowing what we know now, these two words seem dreadfully prophetic. Following Baker's tragic death a couple of weeks later, Jazz Cellar owner Hens Reuter placed a wooden plaque bearing Baker's two words—some of his last—on the wall behind the bar. The unassuming venue has now become a site of pilgrimage for Chet Baker fans the world over.