Recorded and released in 1954 on the Los Angeles–based Pacific Jazz label, Chet Baker Sings is the debut vocal album from the man dubbed the “Prince of Cool”.
A product of the Great Depression, the US Army Band, silver-screen good looks, a deft talent for improvisation and a remarkable amount of drugs, Chet Baker is one of the most fascinating stories of the great Jazz players. His rise to prominence was fast - one of the many factors that would make him deeply unpopular with his contemporaries - becoming a regular performer at iconic Los Angeles jazz clubs The Haig and the Tiffany Club alongside Stan Getz, Charlie Parker and others before joining Gerry Mulligan’s Quartet, where his loose and breezy style would fast elevate his career.
"a kind of freak talent. I've never been around anybody who had a quicker relationship between his ears and his fingers."
- Gerry Mulligan
Baker had released half a dozen 10”s on the Pacific Jazz label in 1953 and had latterly recorded the vocal takes "I Fall in Love Too Easily" and "The Thrill is Gone". Reveling in the attention, he subsequently pushed for a full record of vocal tracks, much to the incredulity of producer Dick Bock. The album was a quick commercial success and - amongst mixed critical reception - was quickly reissued from an eight-track 10” to a fuller 12” edition. It sold robustly and Chet was on the rise. This in many ways would project the themes that ran though much of Baker’s life and work; a confused and messy discography from a brilliant talent that became alienated and ravaged by remarkable drug addiction. Baker was already well into the barbiturates by the time he recorded the sessions, with Bock hugely frustrated as Baker struggled to sing in key, reportedly needing numerous takes on every song. It’s not like Chet necessarily has a spectacular voice, he doesn’t even really have anything more than a sweetly ordinary voice, but he was and remains a hugely evocative vocalist.
His partner Ruth Young explained;
“None of these songs had any meaning for him, truly. He could have been singing Charmin commercials. He was coming from a musical place, and the words were mere notes to him.”
The album is a collection of standards, but he genuinely claims them as his own, with swinging highs and cracking emotional lows. His androgynous tone is a very early example of a male jazz vocalist showing bare emotional nuance; full of unrequited love, heartbreak and regret. His voice is also so rare because it is so musical. It isn’t so much an album of him singing, he is just playing those trumpet lines with his voice.
Cool, sad and redolent of another time, Chet Baker Sings is an album of drowsy crooning and it is a sublime one at that.
