“Chet Baker, Deep in a Dream: The Ultimate Chet Baker Collection” Pacific Jazz *** On his personal road to perdition, the great jazz trumpeter-vocalist Chet Baker once came up before an Italian judge who pronounced that he had the face of an angel but the heart of a devil. Chet Baker was demon-haunted (a decades-long destructive heroin addiction being but one of his devils) and, by the time he died in 1988, plunging from a Amsterdam hotel-room window, he looked 20 years older than his 58 years. Baker’s sad story was told in a recent biography by James Gavin, “Deep in a Dream: The Long Night of Chet Baker.” But more to the point here, at the same time, Gavin chose (and wrote the notes for) the 19 tracks to a companion CD, “Deep in a Dream: The Ultimate Chet Baker Collection.” I don’t know about “ultimate,” since all but two of the tracks date from Baker’s 1950s glory days as the coolest cat on the west coast. A true “ultimate” collection would have to take account of his work during the last quarter-century of his life, much of it deeper and truer. But that’s a cavil. This is an outstanding collection. To call Baker’s sound smooth as silk is to make it sound less fluid than it is. And that voice: soft, epicene, almost girlish. Enigmatic too; part of its powerful effect is its almost emotionless quality. Gavin calls it “sensitive in tone but expressively blank.” Baker sings like a man in a trance. In all, eight of the tracks feature that voice, including previously unreleased a capella versions of two Rodgers and Hart tunes, “Blue Room” and “Spring Is Here.” The CD opens with an instrumental version of Baker’s signature melody, “My Funny Valentine,” and closes with a later, vocal version. Listen to these, as well as Baker’s cool yet sensitive readings of such classics as “This Time the Dream’s on Me,” “Let’s Get Lost” and “Halema” (an ode to his much-put-upon second wife) and you’ll fall deep into Chet Baker’s dream.
Photo Credit: chetbakertribute.com
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