Carlton Theater
5409 South Western Avenue
Los Angeles, California
Jazz Concert
August 12, 1953

Recorded by Cecil Charles Spiller

One of the early Mosaic Records box sets (No. 13, to be exact) was the LP-only Complete Pacific Jazz Live Recordings of the Chet Baker Quartet with Russ Freeman. The 1986 Mosaic package has long been out of print and those historic concert and club performances are now being released on CD for the first time by Blue Note. Moreover, This Time the Dream's on Me, the first of three volumes, includes five additional songs from a tape that was only recently unearthed by James A. Harrod, who is working on a history and discography of the Pacific Jazz label.

Recorded in August 1953 at a Los Angeles theater, this discovery represents the first live recording of Baker's band. Says Harrod in his CD liner notes, "It is evident that the quartet was well-rehearsed and had this book of tunes down pat. The rollicking interpretation of "This Time the Dream's On Me" makes the studio version seem pale in comparison, particularly Freeman's solo choruses." By then "My Funny Valentine," which Baker first recorded in 1952 with Gerry Mulligan's pianoless quartet, had become the trumpeter's signature song and Larry Bunker introduces it here with a thunderous tom-tom roll.

In March 1954, the Chet Baker Quartet set out on its first cross-country tour to capitalize on three hot-selling Pacific Jazz LPs. There were club gigs in major eastern cities interspersed with one-nighters including a concert in Ann Arbor in May that was packed with University of Michigan students. The event was recorded by a local radio DJ-promoter who later sold the tapes to Pacific Jazz producer Richard Bock.

"Line for Lyons," a Mulligan tune saluting Bay Area DJ Jimmy Lyons, opens the set and young Chet's fluid improvisation is nothing short of marvelous. The set includes three ballads--the ubitquitous Valentine, of course, along with "Lover Man" and "My Old Flame" and, after Baker asks the audience for "preferences?," closes with the Freeman classic "Russ Job."

Although one might have wished for better pianos at both venues, both the LA and Ann Arbor concerts were well-recorded for a time when live albums were a rarity, and Blue Note engineers have enhanced the vintage tapes with 24-bit super-mapping technology. As for the musical and historical value of these recordings, if you have any doubt consider what Mulligan once told an interviewer:

"Chet was a kind of fresh talent. He came along, there's no figuring where his influences were, where he learned what he knew. And his facility--I've never been around anybody who had a quicker relationship between his ears and his fingers. He was just uncanny--with that kind of real control, it's as simple as breathing with him. It's something that seldom happens, a talent that comes out in full bloom." Hear it for yourself.

Les Line