"This hat makes me look troubled."

Of heroin’s many jazz victims, Chet Baker may well be the most handsome, and, consequently, the best known. Baker (a native of Oklahoma!) first stepped into the limelight playing with Charlie Parker—another great musician lost to heroin—in the early fifties. Soon afterwards, he joined up with Gerry Mulligan, and their pianoless quartet, famous for its contrapuntal interplay, quickly shot to the top of the jazz world, which is to say that at least twenty people listened to them at some point, and some of those people probably did so intentionally. Listeners adored his minimalistic style and velvety tone, and his natural good looks, tragic mystique, and gentle, melancholy singing voice drew female fans in droves. Baker’s success was not to last long, however, and after falling prey to heroin in the mid-fifties, his career began to steadily ebb, culminating most symbolically with the loss of his teeth (some say in a bar fight, others simply from excessive drug use) and a fifteen month stint in the Italian penal system. Baker made several minor comebacks in subsequent decades, but rarely returned to the United States. He died in 1988, after a mysterious fall from his third-story hotel-room balcony.


Little Girl Blue (Instrumental)
Embraceable You, Blue Note Records, 1995

Recorded in the late fifties (but unreleased until 1995), Chet’s playing here is remarkable for its simplicity and economy of notes. The stripped down trio, including only guitar and bass, further emphasizes what is already a stunningly understated performance.



Angel Eyes
Chet Baker with Fifty Italian Strings, Ojc, 1959



While this album is occasionally criticized for excessively schmaltzy strings, the orchestral arrangements in this song are generally unobtrusive, and leave plenty of room for Chet’s voice to take center stage. A great instance of his unorthodox singing—flat, and tenuous, but beautiful in its own way.

--Chris C

It Sure Is

Bobby Timmons, like most jazz musicians, students of the humanities, and residents of the American Midwest, died frustrated and alone. Another little-known veteran of the soul-jazz era, Timmons hit his stride as pianist with Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers in the late fifties and early sixties. Though an exceedingly able bandleader, Blakey was also an infamous enabler, and when Timmons found himself unfairly typecast as “just another soul player,” the group’s drug and alcohol-laden atmosphere did little to alleviate his crushing depression. Over the next ten years, Timmons struggled to achieve the same level of success he had with Blakey, but never managed to recapture his prior notoriety.

Bobby Timmons died from cirrhosis of the liver in 1974.

Dat Dere (1), This Here (2), This Here is Bobby Timmons, Riverside, 1960

Though both tracks were originally written for The Jazz Messengers and The Cannonball Adderley Sextet, respectively, Timmons cut these particular recordings as leader of his own trio. Orrin Keepnews, author of the liner notes to This Here is Bobby Timmons, and possessor of what may be the worst name I’ve ever heard, had this to say about Dat Dere: “...[a] shouter with just a suggestion of a Latin strain to it.” I don’t particularly feel like writing a pithy description of This Here, either, so here’s something Cannonball Adderley said. "[It’s] simultaneously a shout and a chant" and related to "the roots of soul church music."

Note: Files (Dat Dere on top, This Here on bottom) only seem to play in Firefox.

--Chris C