Chet Baker & Gerry Mulligan - Jazz Ballads 01 TQMP

A guy sent me a message that I turned TQMP in a Mike Oldfield fan club...so here is some jazz for intermezzo :-)) Mike fans, do not worry, still have some more to upload...next week

Specializing in relaxed, even melancholy music, Baker rose to prominence as a leading name in cool jazz in the 1950s. Baker's good looks and smoldering, intimate singing voice established him as a promising name in pop music as well.
Baker's earliest notable professional gigs were with saxophonist Vido Musso's band, and also with tenor saxophonist Stan Getz, though he earned much more renown in 1951 when he was chosen by Charlie Parker to play with him for a series of West Coast engagements.

In 1952, Baker joined the Gerry Mulligan Quartet, which was an instant phenomenon. Several things made the Mulligan/Baker group special, the most prominent being the interplay between Mulligan's baritone sax and Baker's trumpet. Rather than playing identical melody lines in unison like bebop giants Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie, the two would complement each other's playing with contrapuntal touches, and it often seemed as if they had telepathy in anticipating what the other was going to play next. The Quartet's version of "My Funny Valentine", featuring a memorable Baker solo, was a major hit, and became a song with which Baker was intimately associated.

The Quartet found success quickly, but lasted less than a year because of Mulligan's arrest and imprisonment on drug charges. In 1954, Baker won the Downbeat Jazz Poll. Baker formed a quartet with Russ Freeman in 1953-54 with bassists like Carson Smith, Joe Mondragon, and Jimmy Bond and drummers like Shelly Manne, Larry Bunker, and Bob Neel. The quartet was successful in their three live sets in 1954. The first set was in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and the other two in Los Angeles. In some songs in the set, Baker not only played trumpet, but also "boobams", a set of little tuned drums made from bamboo wood. These were also used in some of his early studio recordings played by one of his percussionists. They were used until he retired them in late 1956. The final album which the novelty drums were used was Chet Baker and the Crew. Over the next few years, Baker fronted his own combos, including a 1955 quintet featuring Francy Boland, where Baker combined playing trumpet and singing. He became an icon of the West Coast "cool school" of jazz, helped by his good looks and singing talent.

Unfortunatelly, Baker was an heroin addcited, often selling his instruments to buy drugs, often being beaten when buying drugs, imprisoned several times, expelled from UK and Germany because of drugs...and his promising musical career declined as a result.

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