This may very well be one of trumpeter Chet Baker’s best and most under-appreciated jazz records. If the trumpeter never made a “great” record – whatever anyone’s personal favorite may be – this is as close as he came to making a memorable or worthy one.
But it feels a little removed from time. The program is made up of standards and bop classics that mostly date back to the forties and early fifties (Sonny Rollins’s 1956 “Pent-Up House” is the most recent piece on the program).
In a year that saw the recording debuts of Herbie Hancock, McCoy Tyner, not to mention Nina Simone and Bob Dylan, this record – one of the first of Baker’s multiple comeback discs – feels a bit old fashioned. But Baker and company’s new bottles add a delicious piquancy to this old wine.
Chet is Back! was recorded in January 1962, exactly one month after the trumpeter was released from an Italian prison. He had served 17 months of a 19-month-plus sentence for drug smuggling and forgery.
Released from prison in December 1961, Baker soon landed a contract with RCA Italiana, which paid the trumpeter $10,000 (about $150,000 in today’s money) for a one-year contract.
The first of these recordings was a jazz set, happily titled Chet is Back! Even the cover goes some way to reproducing William Claxton’s earlier and legendary photography, although in color (weirdly, there is an oddly orange wash on some issues and a sickly green on others).
After his many trials and tribulations, Baker looks pretty good even so. He even looks happy, as if he’s back home at last. But he sounds even better. Maybe the best he has ever sounded on record.
The sextet – an unusual format for the trumpeter – features Baker with Italian pianist Amedeo Tommasi (1935-2021), who toured Italy with a Baker quartet that winter; Belgians Bobby Jaspar (1926-63) on reeds, René Thomas (1926-75) on guitar, and Benoît Quersin (1927-92) on bass; and Swiss drummer Daniel Humair (b. 1938).
While Baker had previously recorded with both Jaspar and Quersin in Paris in 1955, this was a group that was mostly new to Baker. But each and every member of this beautifully-conceived sextet is firing on all pistons.
It is a solid outing, and one that befits Baker exceedingly well. Baker was not heard enough with guitarists, which makes Thomas’s outstanding contributions so wonderful to behold (this listener thinks Jaspar’s flute balances nicely with Baker’s individual sensitivities as well).
Baker plays here as though his very reputation or legacy depended upon it. No doubt, it did. And he delivers. There is none of the laziness (or pure inability) that started creeping in to his music shortly after this release.
Baker’s lines are clear, crisp, clever and teeming with a vim and vigor that I, for one, can’t recall in too many places (check out the way he outfoxes all the Miles comparisons on Tommasi’s playful blues “Ballata in form di blues”).
It’s hard to pick a highlight: they’re all wonderful. Baker’s handling of the ballads (“These Foolish Things,” “Over the Rainbow”), though, has a bit more teeth than his usual way of chewing on such pieces. Of course, Baker himself first played “Barbados” – handled here at a festive clip – with the tune’s composer, Charlie Parker.
What is too often left out of the well-deserved positive commentary on Chet is Back! is that the disc was issued in 1962…but only in Italy. This record was never issued in the United States until 1990 – a full two years after Baker’s death – on a CD titled The Italian Sessions.
The disc was reissued again – most stupidly – in 1992 as Somewhere Over the Rainbow, but this time with two tracks (“Barbados,” “Ballata in forma di blues”) missing, for no good reason.
What’s interesting about this disc and the earlier U.S. issue is that both (and another in 1996) were supervised by John Snyder (b. 1948), who, years earlier, brought Baker to both the CTI and A&M labels, and recorded the trumpeter for his own briefly-lived Artists House label. It was probably Baker himself who bankrupted Artists House.
Snyder, an unabashed fan of Baker’s, was one in a long line of listeners who were used and abused by the guy. Maybe these issues were just revenge.
Finally, a 2003 release, with a modified cover and the original title, was issued, featuring the entire contents of Chet is Back! as well as its follow-up, two singles Baker recorded with Ennio Morricone (1928-2020), who, of course, would go on to become the legendary film composer he is recognized as today.
(The version of the disc under review here is the 2003 French release that was reissued in 2016, both also with the contents of the original LP and the Ennio Morricone singles).
RCA Italiana signed Baker with the intention of turning him into a pop star by cashing in on his notoriety. Baker’s trial and imprisonment were a cause célèbre in Italy in the late fifties and he’d become a familiar face in the Italian press.
Baker had also appeared in the Italian romantic comedy “Howlers of the Dock” (1960), singing “Arrivederci” over the end credits. There was every reason to believe he could be an Italian pop sensation.
The singles are most remarkable, though, in that they are the compositions of Baker himself. Baker was never known as a much of composer, and these four songs might be among the only originals Baker ever played.
The melodies are derived from a portfolio of tunes Baker wrote during his Italian incarceration and were intended to be part of a score for a proposed film that the legendary producer Dino De Laurentis (1919-2010) wanted to make on Chet Baker’s life. Before his prison sentence, De Laurentis fronted Baker $3,000 for his story and an additional advance for the film’s score.
But such a film had already been made: All the Fine Young Cannibals, the 1960 feature starring Robert Wagner (as “Chad Bixby”), who replaced the originally-cast Baker himself and who, by the time filming started, had jetted off to Italy. Little wonder why De Laurentis lost interest in the deal.
So, Baker took some of the songs he wrote for his abandoned film and had them harmonized by Tommasi, who recalled that most of them were “mediocre.” Italian-language lyrics were added to four of the melodies by Allesandro Maffei.
The moody – almost mournful – ballads are pure Baker at his romantic best (and very much in the spirit of “Arrivederci”), with Baker beautifully intoning his Italian lyrics with grace and finesse. Each of the four ballads also feature a bit of Baker’s trumpet. The most successful of this group of genuinely appealing songs is surely “Chetty’s Lullaby,” a lament written in prison for Baker’s young son, Chesney Aftab Baker (b. 1957).
It’s not clear how successful the two singles were. But given that RCA Italiana did not renew Baker’s contract upon the singles’ release, it’s likely they didn’t get much of a return on their investment.
Indeed, Baker would not record the Morricone-scored songs ever again and was never recorded performing the tunes in concert either.
Somehow, they even flew well below the radar of any other performer. That is except for British vocalist and trumpeter Sue Richardson, who featured all four titles on her Chet Baker tribute disc Too Cool (2013). Of note, Richardson’s lovely covers find her translating the lyrics to sing in English. She even gives one of the tracks, “So che ti perderò” (“I Know I’ll Lose You”), a beautiful instrumental reading.