AboutFrom his emergence in the 1950s—when an uncannily beautiful young man from Oklahoma appeared on the West Coast to become, seemingly overnight, the prince of “cool” jazz—until his violent, drug-related death in Amsterdam in 1988, Chet Baker lived a life that has become an American myth. Now, drawing on hundreds of interviews and previously untapped sources, James Gavin gives a hair-raising account of the trumpeter’s dark journey. The story of Baker’s demise—a heretofore unsolved riddle—is revealed here at last. So is the truth behind his tormented childhood, the pain of which haunted his entire life. Gavin explores the birth of the melancholy trumpet playing, the fragile tenor voice, and the otherworldly personal aura that catapulted Baker to fame. Sexy, angelic, needy, and forbidding all at once, Baker became known as the James Dean of jazz. Like Dean, he struck a note of menace in the staid fifties: behind his ultra cool, handsome façade lay something ominous, unspoken. The mystery drove both sexes crazy. But his only real romance, apart from music, was with drugs. And in mesmerizing detail, Gavin narrates the harrowing spiral of dependency down which Baker tumbled, dragging with him those who dared get close. From his golden promise to his eventual destruction, Baker’s life mirrored America’s fall from postwar innocence. Deep in a Dream is the portrait of a musician whose singular artistry and mystique have never lost their power to enchant and seduce us. Jazzman Baker sang and played trumpet like a dream and lived a nightmare, thanks to a heroin habit that wreaked havoc on his soul and on the lives of those around him. Gavin's in-depth bio is definitive, tracing Baker's career and his art in detail. Yet the volume feels like it belongs on the shelf next to such harrowing addiction tomes as William Burroughs' Junky and Art Pepper's Straight Life. Whether you read it as a character study of a titanic, troubled musician or as a lurid cautionary tale, Dream is a haunting prose poem that's every bit as affecting as one of Baker's solos. Popular cool-toned trumpeter and a fragile singer whose charisma made up for his limited voice, with his good looks Chet Baker probably could have been a movie star. Instead he became a drug addict in the mid-'50s and had an extremely erratic lifestyle with horrific episodes alternating with some wonderful musical moments. Chet Baker certainly started out on top. After getting out of the Army, he gigged with Charlie Parkeron the West Coast in 1952 and then joined the Gerry Mulligan Quartet, a pianoless unit that soon became among the most popular in jazz. After he was jailed for his own drug problems, Baker (who had helped make "My Funny Valentine" into a hit) formed a quartet with pianist Russ Freeman. He began to win polls on both trumpet and vocals, toured Europe in 1955 and seemed on his way to a lucrative career. But by 1960 Baker was in an Italian jail and, although he made a few worthy recordings in the '60s, by the end of the decade his teeth had been knocked out after a botched drug deal and he was out of music. Against all odds Chet Baker made a gradual comeback in the 1970s. Although Baker recorded far too much during his final 15 years, his nomadic lifestyle (never kicking drugs and essentially wandering all over Europe) was unstable and his occasional vocals (always an acquired taste) were generally poor, his trumpet playing actually improved as the decade progressed. In fact despite everything, Chet Baker was still in his musical prime when he fell out of a second story window (pushed or slipped?) to his death in 1988. He remains one of the great cult figures of jazz. |
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