“Fair Weather” – Herbie Hancock with Chet Baker (1986)

On a summer day in 1985, trumpeter and vocalist Chet Baker walked in to a Paris studio to record one song, “Fair Weather,” for the soundtrack to French director Bertrand Tavernier’s (1941-2021) film ‘Round Midnight.¹ Other musicians on the date included pianist Herbie Hancock, the film’s musical supervisor, bassist Pierre Michelot and drummer Billy Higgins.

Michelot had previously arranged some pieces for Baker’s album Big Band (1957), even contributing the song “Chet,” and Higgins would record one other time with Baker on Charlie Haden’s Silence (1989). But this was Herbie Hancock’s one and only recording with the now ravaged but remarkably still-productive trumpeter and vocalist.

The occasion made a distinct impression on Hancock.

“The vocal performance was exactly what we needed,” wrote Hancock in his notes to the 1989 soundtrack album to Let’s Get Lost, “and his trumpet solo was brilliant. I had forgotten that Chet couldn’t read music. I remember how fresh his first take was. He followed the chords as if he had known them all his life.

“The notes became pivot points connecting the chords. His intuition was flawless, his musical choices perfect.

“It was then that I personally discovered the greatness of Chet Baker.”

Nothing much was made of the song – or Baker’s performance – at the time. “Chet Baker’s wan voice and horn are the only weak link,” wrote Leonard Feather in an otherwise positive review of the ‘Round Midnight soundtrack.² The song itself factors in the film’s soundtrack on only three brief occasions: twice as source music (on a record player and in a bar) and once, during the trumpet solo, as part of the score.

It’s not at all clear how or why Chet Baker, then 55, got the part. Based at the time in Copenhagen, Baker spent much of that year touring Europe with guitarist Phillip Catherine and bassist Jean-Louis Rassinfosse – both Belgians.³ The trio had been captured live the month before on the Enja release Strollin’ (1986).

Perhaps Herbie Hancock got word that Baker was in town during the soundtrack’s July 1-12 sessions and felt that this particular trumpeter and vocalist would add to the film’s appropriate sound of fifties-era jazz. But even in the film, when Dexter Gordon’s character asks to “get a trumpet,” they don’t get Baker. Gordon and Baker never played together, anyway.

They get the distinguished and more reliable Danish trumpeter, composer, arranger and conductor Palle Mikkelborg, who Gordon’s Turner even calls “Palle” in the film.⁴

But what has often gone unremarked, and moreover mistaken, in the four decades since, is that this recording of “Fair Weather” marks the song’s official recording debut. Like another “Fair Weather,” by Benny Golson, that was premiered on the 1959 album Chet Baker in New York, this “Fair Weather” is another first for Baker.

Although sometimes misattributed to pianist and composer Bud Powell⁵ – whose early-sixties Parisian sojourn formed the basis of the story behind ‘Round Midnight‘s fictional Dale Turner, as beautifully portrayed by tenor saxophonist Dexter Gordon – “Fair Weather” was written in 1964 by trumpeter and sometime vocalist Kenny Dorham (1924-72),

Coming up in the bebop era, Dorham himself quickly earned a revered, though largely uncelebrated, status as a dynamic and lyrical player in the bands of Dizzy Gillespie, Billy Eckstine, and Lionel Hampton. Eventually, he joined Charlie Parker – where he impressed a young Chet Baker – and, later, Sonny Stitt, Max Roach and Art Blakey.

By the time he went solo, Dorham would adapt his style to the changing times. He came up with such enduring compositions as “Blue Spring,” “Lotus Blossom,” the jazz standard “Blue Bossa” and “Una Mas,” the title track to Dorham’s 1963 album, featuring a young Herbie Hancock and teenaged drummer Tony Williams (1945-97), both of whom, of course, are featured on screen in ‘Round Midnight.

Dorham recorded prolifically through 1965 – rounding out with the superb Trompeta Toccata – but suffered from health problems that seemingly kept him from an active recording and touring schedule. Despite making occasional appearances on record, including Cedar Walton’s 1968 debut Cedar!, Dorham wrote briefly for DownBeat and became more enmeshed in academia.

The trumpeter and sometime vocalist, inspired himself by Chet Baker’s turn to vocals, would ultimately die of kidney disease in 1972, at the tender age of only 48.

Dorham never got around to recording “Fair Weather,” or bothered shopping it out to someone else who could do it justice. But, apparently, he played the song for the esteemed Norwegian jazz critic Randi Hultin (1926-2000), who actually recorded Dorham playing (on piano) and singing the song in 1964.

The lovely, though unusual, melody, with its unpredictable chord changes, expresses a surprising note of optimism. The brief lyric projects a sense of sunny racial accord, certainly an idealization during the dark days of the civil-rights movement. The fairness of the title seems both literal, as a more favorable condition, and as a metaphor for an environment of racial justice.

Many years later, Hultin gave her tape of “Fair Weather” to American-born Chan Parker (1925-99), once the common-law wife of Charlie Parker (1920-55) and later married to American saxophonist Phil Woods (1931-2005). In 1985, Parker, who had long resided in Paris, transcribed the song.

It’s likely that Ms. Parker – who gets namechecked in the fictional ‘Round Midnight, as the 14-year-old daughter of Dexter Gordon’s Dale Turner – presented the song to Herbie Hancock, while he was preparing the music for the film.

Musically, the song is a perfect fit for Baker: he maneuvers the odd changes with seemingly effortless aplomb, particularly notable as he couldn’t read a note of music. Baker’s trumpet solo is just as “wan” as Feather suggests, but his vocal is typically romantic, which is odd for something that is clearly not a love song.

In truth, though, it is Herbie Hancock himself who makes “Fair Weather” work so well. His accompaniment throughout is preternatural; he takes the listener back to the pianist’s days in the second great Miles Davis Quintet, where his contributions were more impressionistic than commanding. He cedes and colors, beautifully, to the soloist.

His piano solo, though, is nothing short of magnificent. It’s such a shame that “Fair Weather” marks the only meeting between Hancock and Baker: the pianist, always on his A game, makes everyone else sound that much better, including Baker, an erratic artist with a spotty, though particularly capacious discography.

Herbie Hancock ultimately won many accolades for ‘Round Midnight, including the Academy Award for Best Original Score. But because the film’s “score” was largely perceived as a collection of “songs” – like the title track, which wasn’t even a Hancock composition – the win caused much controversy at the time.

That year, Hancock was up against such competition as Ennio Morricone for the truly magisterial The Mission – the composer, himself, complained, feeling he deserved the award – Jerry Goldsmith’s Hoosiers and James Horner’s Aliens. But while ‘Round Midnight‘s “songs” were used in support of the film’s story, Hancock’s music – including “Chan’s Song (Never Said),” co-written with Stevie Wonder, and itself something of a jazz standard – was, indeed, used to score the film.

“Fair Weather” has not yet achieved the renown that, say, “Chan’s Song” has, But covers of the song have kept it in rotation. Vocal covers can be heard by Sheila Jordan (2000) and Bob Mover (2013), while instrumental versions can be heard by trumpeters Nicholas Peyton on his From This Moment (1993) and Jeremy Pelt on his recent Woven (2025).

“I’ll always remember [Chet’s] heart pouring through those well-chosen notes,” wrote Hancock, “and the warmth I felt inside, as I listened to him play, for what was to be the last time. Over the span of his career, Chet Baker firmly established his unique place in the history of jazz.”

Endnotes:

1. Because the featured players are listed alphabetically on the soundtrack album’s front cover, Baker is listed first, despite his contribution to only one title here. ↩︎
2. Los Angeles Times, September 30, 1986. ↩︎
3. Gavin, James, Deep in a Dream: The Long Night of Chet Baker (Chicago, Chicago Review Press, 2003), p 317-318. While Gavin includes ‘Round Midnight in the book’s discography, he doesn’t detail Baker’s involvement in the recording in any way. ↩︎
4. Mikkelborg and Gordon worked together on several Ben Webster sessions in 1968, while Mikkelborg arranged and conducted Gordon’s exceptional 1975 disc More Than You Know, featuring Mikkelborg’s “Good Morning Sun” and an early version of Gordon’s “Tivoli,” which is reprised on the ‘Round Midnight soundtrack as well. ↩︎
5. There are at least two references to Bud Powell as the composer of “Fair Weather”: Leonard Feather’s “‘Round Midnight’ Film: Now is Finally the Time,” Los Angeles Times, September 29, 1985, and Ron Welburn in an ostensible review of the ‘Round Midnight soundtrack, DownBeat, April 1986, p. 31, 35. Norwegian vocalist Ola Fjellvikaas splits the difference, crediting “Fair Weather” to both Powell and Dorham, on her 2000 disc Street of Dreams. ↩︎