But drugs and legal problems caught up with him, and by the 60s a string of arrests and periods in jail led him to Europe, where he was received reverently even as trouble followed him. He won several Downbeat polls for best vocalist and best trumpet player, and he was one of the biggest new stars in music. The style was cool, pretty, and controlled, and Baker was on his way to becoming one of the scene’s biggest stars (it should also be noted that many of the players were white, which made the movement easier to market and had something to do with the copious media coverage surrounding it).īy the middle of the 1950s, Baker had left Mulligan’s group and was making records under his own name. Once Baker hooked up with baritone saxophonist and composer Gerry Mulligan, the scene formed around The Lighthouse had developed a distinctive identity called West Coast jazz. By 1952, he became a regular at jam sessions at the Hermosa Beach club The Lighthouse and played with Charlie Parker on a string of dates on the West Coast. His stratospheric rise in the early 1950s owed much to the elegant style and rhythmic grace of his trumpet playing, but his good looks didn’t hurt, and by the time he started to sing in a fragile and androgynous tone that sounded unlike any other singer, he became a teenage pin-up and a celebrity, a rarity in the jazz world.īaker spent his early years in Oklahoma and moved to Southern California with his family as an adolescent.

It can be difficult to untangle the romantic myth surrounding Chet Baker from the merits of his music.

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