The wild ride of the most romanticized icon in jazz is thrillingly recounted in this first major biography.

From his emergence in the 1950s—when an uncannily beautiful young man from Oklahoma appeared on the West Coast to become, seemingly overnight, the prince of “cool” jazz—until his violent, drug-related death in Amsterdam in 1988, Chet Baker lived a life that has become an American myth. Now, drawing on hundreds of interviews and previously untapped sources, James Gavin gives a hair-raising account of the trumpeter’s dark journey.

The story of Baker’s demise—a heretofore unsolved riddle—is revealed here at last. So is the truth behind his tormented childhood, the pain of which haunted his entire life. Gavin explores the birth of the melancholy trumpet playing, the fragile tenor voice, and the otherworldly personal aura that catapulted Baker to fame. Sexy, angelic, needy, and forbidding all at once, Baker became known as the James Dean of jazz. Like Dean, he struck a note of menace in the staid fifties: behind his ultra cool, handsome façade lay something ominous, unspoken. The mystery drove both sexes crazy. But his only real romance, apart from music, was with drugs. And in mesmerizing detail, Gavin narrates the harrowing spiral of dependency down which Baker tumbled, dragging with him those who dared get close.

From his golden promise to his eventual destruction, Baker’s life mirrored America’s fall from postwar innocence. Deep in a Dream is the portrait of a musician whose singular artistry and mystique have never lost their power to enchant and seduce us.

Jazzman Baker sang and played trumpet like a dream and lived a nightmare, thanks to a heroin habit that wreaked havoc on his soul and on the lives of those around him. Gavin's in-depth bio is definitive, tracing Baker's career and his art in detail. Yet the volume feels like it belongs on the shelf next to such harrowing addiction tomes as William Burroughs' Junky and Art Pepper's Straight Life. Whether you read it as a character study of a titanic, troubled musician or as a lurid cautionary tale, Dream is a haunting prose poem that's every bit as affecting as one of Baker's solos. Reviewed by Tom Sincla

Popular cool-toned trumpeter and a fragile singer whose charisma made up for his limited voice, with his good looks Chet Baker probably could have been a movie star. Instead he became a drug addict in the mid-'50s and had an extremely erratic lifestyle with horrific episodes alternating with some wonderful musical moments.

Chet Baker certainly started out on top. After getting out of the Army, he gigged with Charlie Parker on the West Coast in 1952 and then joined the Gerry Mulligan Quartet, a pianoless unit that soon became among the most popular in jazz. After Mulligan was jailed for his own drug problems, Baker (who had helped make "My Funny Valentine" into a hit) formed a quartet with pianist Russ Freeman. He began to win polls on both trumpet and vocals, toured Europe in 1955 and seemed on his way to a lucrative career. But by 1960 Baker was in an Italian jail and, although he made a few worthy recordings in the '60s, by the end of the decade his teeth had been knocked out after a botched drug deal and he was out of music.

Against all odds Chet Baker made a gradual comeback in the 1970s. Although Baker recorded far too much during his final 15 years, his nomadic lifestyle (never kicking drugs and essentially wandering all over Europe) was unstable and his occasional vocals (always an acquired taste) were generally poor, his trumpet playing actually improved as the decade progressed. In fact despite everything, Chet Baker was still in his musical prime when he fell out of a second story window (pushed or slipped?) to his death in 1988. He remains one of the great cult figures of jazz. -- Scott Yanow, All Music Guide

    
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More Biographical Links:
Chet Baker Europe Page
Some great sound clips from this jazz legend and a list of books and movies about him

Greg's Chet Baker Tribute
Contains tributes, RealAudio files, and news

Chet Baker – His Life
Chet Baker was undoubtedly one of the leading jazz trumpet players of the Fifties. Born Chesney Henry Baker in Yale, Oklahoma, December 23, 1929, he started to play trumpet while still in his teens as a member of the 298th Army Band. Beginning in 1950, he sat in at countless jam sessions at Bop City and the Blackhawk in San Francisco. This perios marked his first encounters with the altoplayers Paul Desmond and Charlie Parker. 
After his final army discharge in 1952, Baker moved to Los Angeles where he participated in some historic Pacific Jazz recording sessions at a club called the Haig and with a group led by Gerry Mulligan. This group was to evolve in to the famous pianoless Gerry Mulligan Quartet. From this point on, the popularity of Chet Baker grew quite fast, quickly garnering him the number one position in popularity polls in Down Beat and Metronome, and winning him many thousands of fans worldwide. 

The Chet Baker Quartet was established when Mulligan temporarily retired from music in 1953. In 1953 Baker's Quartet made the longest European tour yet made by an American jazz group. Originally scheduled for four months, the tour eventually stretched to eight. During this tour, Chet's piano player, Dick Twardzik, 24, died in a Paris hotel of an overdose. The narcotics problem was rearing his ugly head and Baker himself soon became hopelessly strung out. He was arrested in April 1959 for having heroin in his possession. 

Reentering society in the fall of 1959, Chet Baker embarked upon yet another extended tour of Europe and probably the bleakest period of his life. He was hospitalized and arrested several times, generating little except a lot of nasty rumours and quite a few unflattering portraits in popular magazines. 

March 1964 found him deported back to the United States from Germany. He switched to flugelhorn to replace his stolen trumpet. The roller coaster of Baker's career continued to go up and down, only this time with less velocity and diminished public notice. The recordings he made for Pacific Jazz and Verve in the late Sixties were disappointing and often embarrassing, showcasin stifling arrangements, rock rhythms and a low flame of inspiration. 

Baker lived in New York and Los Angeles until 1968, when he moved to San Francisco and was promptly mugged there by five hoodlums who knocked many of his teeth out. Chet stopped playing for two years, controlling his drug addiction through methadone. He slowly made his way back in 1974 and started to record again. Of course, his playing was a bit different now but startingly his work began to show more and more range and authority. He returned to Europe in 1975, where he started to extensively play on concerts and record with quartet, trio and duo. The renewed assurance and hearthfelt lyricism in both his playing and singing continued to impress both fan and critic alike. His music always projecting beauty, passion and emotion. But it all ended too soon, when on May 1988 he fell out of his hotelwindow in Amsterdam. Baker was dead, jazz lost a giant. 


Chet Baker – His Music
When Chet Baker was still a member of the Gerry Mulligan Quartet, his playing was inspired by that of Miles Davis, characterized by restrained dynamics and an intimate, warm delivery. His tone had a certain melancholy quality, never overly sharpedged or raw, a quality often referred to as 'tristesse', 

Chet Baker is often wrongly associated with the so-called West Coast Jazz, but his musical roots and sense of swing derive very clearly from the classic BeBop stylists prominent in New York City in the late Forties and early Fifties. Chet's playing is moody, with natural ease and originality of conception, a model of economic inventiveness. 

After Baker returned from Europe to the USA in the mid-sixties his playing underwent a very marked evolution. His musical ideas somehow showed a stronger sense of logic, his more muscular attack seemed to owe a lot less to Miles and a lot more to Fats Navarro. After his return to Europe (1975) his playing got even more emotion and his timing became unique, relaxed and warm, soft and deep.