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Chet Baker is portrayed by Ethan Hawke in the 2015 film Born to Be Blue. It is a reimagining of Baker's career in the late 1960s, when he is famous for both his music and his addiction, and he takes part in a movie about his life to boost his career. [ 50 ] Steve Wall plays Baker in the 2018 film My Foolish Heart.
Sep 26, 2024 · Chet Baker (born December 23, 1929, Yale, Oklahoma, U.S.—died May 13, 1988, Amsterdam, Netherlands) was an American jazz trumpeter and vocalist noted for the plaintive, fragile tone of both his playing and singing. He was a cult figure whose well-publicized struggles with drug addiction curtailed a promising career.
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
Aug 8, 2023 · It wasn't until the next day when someone identified the corpse that the world learned the famous jazz trumpeter and singer Chet Baker had died about 3:10 a.m. on May 13, 1988, after plunging from a hotel window, according to "Deep in a Dream: The Long Night of Chet Baker." The Amsterdam Police determined Baker had fallen from the third-floor ...
- Andrew Amelinckx
- Early Years
- Finding Fame
- Going Solo
- Personal Troubles
- Later Resurgence
- Lasting Legacy
Let’s rewind. Born Chesney Henry Baker, on December 23, 1929, in Yale, Oklahoma, Baker was drawn to music at a young age, aided by the fact that he was born into a musical family (his father had once been a professional guitarist and his mother played piano). A Jack Teagarden fan, his dad bought 14-year-old “Chetty” (as his mum called him) a trombo...
Baker’s big breakthrough was joining baritone saxophonist Gerry Mulligan’s quartet in 1952 – an outfit deemed revolutionary at the time because it had no pianist. The unorthodox set up allowed its two horn players more harmonic freedom, however, and prompted them to play intertwining contrapuntal melodies. The group’s gigs attracted huge interest, ...
Baker went solo when Mulligan was incarcerated for narcotics offenses, and quickly made his mark as a vocalist as well as trumpeter, releasing Chet Baker Sings in 1954. His mellow voice possessed a languorous, dreamy quality, and it helped to further his appeal with the wider public. He recorded a slew of albums for Pacific Jazz – among them 1957’s...
But being a jazz musician had its perils and, by this time, hard drugs began to play a major part in the trumpeter’s life. Like many jazz musicians from that period, Chet Baker had been seduced by narcotics, perhaps believing that drugs could aid his creativity. Instead, though, they started to wreck his life. Baker left the US for Europe in the la...
In the 70s, Baker started rebuilding his career. A move to New York saw him recording again, joining the roster at producer Creed Taylor’s influential CTI label, and reuniting with Gerry Mulligan. But tastes were changing in the 70s, with bebop and straight-ahead jazz being eclipsed by the more popular fusion and jazz-rock. By the end of the decade...
Since then, interest in Baker’s life and music has never diminished. He’s been the subject of two films – 2015’s Born To Be Blue, in which Ethan Hawke played Baker; and Bruce Weber’s 1988 documentary, Let’s Get Lost – and had several books written about him, including James Gavin’s revelatory, warts’n’all biography, Deep in a Dream: The Long Night ...
- Charles Waring
- 7 min
Apr 2, 2024 · To many, he was the Prince of Cool—the “James Dean” of Jazz, a troubled but sensitive loverboy—but the mythology he carried remains labyrinthian. The mythos starts with the music, of course, and it was there that Baker gave the most of himself. There’s a reason why Chet Baker appeals to both the lovers and the broken-hearted in equal ...
Chet Baker was born in Yale, Oklahoma, on December 23, 1929. At the age of 11, he moved to California along with his family (in the year 1940). As a son of music-loving parents, Chet started singing in the local church choir and tried playing trombone before he later started playing trumpet at the age of 13 years.
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Chet Baker. Chesney Henry Baker Jr., December 23, 1929 – May 13th 1988), was born in Yale (Oklahoma). Baker, a trumpet player, was an integral part of the West coast’s “cool jazz” school in the 1950s. Baker first rose to fame in jazz as part of the Gerry Mulligan Quartet, which was composed of a pianoless quartet.
