View
Chart of Chet Baker
Chet Baker; December 23, 1929; 12:45 am;
Yale OK (1)
Sun at 1 Capricorn trine Neptune at 3 Virgo
Chet Baker Sings
In
early 1954, trumpet player Chet Baker’s career
seemed unstoppable. Having just turned twenty-three, he had
been leading his own quartet since the previous summer, and
already had ten recording sessions behind him.
On February 15, in a Los Angeles recording studio, he recorded
seven songs for a 10-inch LP release called Chet Baker
Sings.
As the title suggests, Baker was not only playing his instrument
on this record, he was also singing.
Among the titles recorded that day, his vocal rendition
of My Funny Valentine was to become a haunting classic, one
that for a brief moment in time seemed to have Baker poised
to be a superstar.
West
Coast “Cool”
Things
had moved quickly for Baker in the last two years, since
he had played in saxophone legend Charlie Parker’s
quintet in the spring of 1952, while Parker was staying and
playing on the West Coast. Saxophonist Gerry Mulligan, who
had moved to California after playing and recording with
Miles Davis’ seminal Birth of the Cool nonet, then
invited Baker to join his new band.
Mulligan’s quartet, featuring Baker, was unique at
its time because of the absence of a piano, giving the music
a breezy, intimate sound. They quickly became a sensation
in the jazz world, turning attention from its established
Mecca, New York, where hard be-bop jazz was considered “hot”,
to the new “cool” jazz sounds of the West Coast.
However,
things turned sour for the group when Mulligan was arrested
for heroin possession on April 13, 1953, (2) and sentenced to jail for the rest of the year. Baker was
soon installed as leader of his own quartet, which was able
to establish itself quickly due to the notoriety he had acquired
with Mulligan.
Star Potential
Although
Baker’s music was not appreciated by all
jazz fans, he had broad appeal for reasons beyond the sounds
he made. Baker was also handsome in a 50’s James Dean
or Elvis Presley kind of way, only neither Dean nor Presley
was known to the world yet.
Baker
had incredible star potential in 1954, as his manager was
aware and eager to cash in on. However, the decision
to sing appears to have been Baker’s alone. In fact,
he had already tried singing two songs during a session the
previous October, and not many people were keen on the results
(some thought he “sounds like a girl”).
Baker
was by no means a vocal virtuoso. Unlike many jazz musicians,
he had no formal musical training, at least not
before he had played in an army band, and didn’t have
much in the way of vocal range or tone. But Baker was able
to use his wispy voice to his advantage, as its weakness
brought a special tenderness to the music.
As his trumpet style already had a lyrical quality modeled
after Miles Davis, the addition of his whisper-like vocal
tone gave his music an added dimension, an ethereal quality
that matched his rebel/movie-star looks in a perfect contrast
of toughness and vulnerability.
My Funny Valentine
My funny valentine
Sweet comic valentine
You make me smile with my heart
Your looks are laughable,
Unphotographable
Yet you're my favorite work of art
Is your figure less than Greek
Is your mouth a little weak
When you open it to speak
Are you smart
Don't change a hair for me
Not if you care for me
Stay little valentine stay
Each day is Valentine's Day (3)
During
the session, Baker sang ballads by songwriters like the
Gershwin brothers and Hoagy Carmichael. But it was his
rendition of Rodgers and Hart’s My Funny Valentine that made it his signature tune for the rest of his life.
Baker
had already made the song his own as an instrumentalist,
when he recorded the song earlier with Mulligan’s group.
But his vocal version came to represent Baker as he would
be immortalized: a dreamboat serenade artist, a soothing
voice dressed in desirable masculinity.
Baker
biographer James Gavin notes that, at the time, “Female
admirers in bobby sox and penny loafers filled every club
he played. They sighed collectively during My Funny Valentine,
when the princely trumpeter assures his plain-looking sweetheart: ‘You’re
my favorite work of art’.” (4)
According
to Gavin, from the first time he heard it, “The
song fascinated Baker. It captured all he aspired to as a
musician…the Baker mystique – a sense that ‘cool’ was
a lid on an explosive jar of emotions – had its roots
in (Baker’s performance of My Funny Valentine).” (5)
Birdland and Beyond
In
May 1954, just three months after the Chet Baker Sings session,
while Baker was touring the country as a headlining
success, he played a month-long stint at New York City’s
Birdland club, the “Jazz Corner of the World”.
The
engagement was stressful for Baker, since he was booked
to play with Dizzy Gillespie and Miles Davis alternating
in the opening slots. As both trumpeters were superior players
by his own admission, he was embarrassed by the fact that
his iconic stature gave him the limelight over them, not
to mention the obvious racial bias in his favor. (6)
The
event proved to be the first in a series of events leading
to
Baker’s downfall. An acting role in the Korean War
B-movie, Hell’s Horizon, did little to advance his
career, in contrast to Presley’s success in the medium
two years later; then, on October 21, 1955, pianist Dick
Twardzik died of a heroin overdose while on tour with Baker
in Paris.
Baker himself started to use hard drugs in early 1954, a
habit that would plague him for the rest of his life. He
spent time in jail following a drug arrest in Italy in 1960,
which cost him another film job, and spent long periods afterwards
in squalid retirement, though he continued to resurrect himself
on stage from time to time.
He
died after falling out of the window of his hotel room
in Amsterdam
on May 13, 1988 at 3 a.m. (7) However, Let’s
Get Lost, a biographical documentary released later that
year, gave new life to the image Chet Baker created that
magical day he first sang My Funny Valentine.
Let’s
Get Lost
View
Chart of "Chet Baker Sings" Session
‘Chet Baker Sings’ session;
February 15, 1954; time unknown, 2:00 p.m. used; Los Angeles
CA (8)
Sun at 26 Aquarius trine Neptune at 25 Libra
On
the day Baker recorded the songs for his Chet Baker
Sings album,
he was having a Sun-Neptune trine recurrence transit.
In his case, his natal Sun is conjunct Saturn in Capricorn,
which reflects, in a very literal way, Baker’s “cool” persona,
the image that was conjured by his music and looks.
The coincidence of his recurrence transit happening at the
time of his recording of My Funny Valentine reflects the
essential reason why the song came to be so closely identified
with him.
As
the Sun-Neptune trine is associated with fantasy and imagery,
Baker was able to summon and project a sense of
intimacy and “realism” through his weak, untrained
voice.
Baker’s Sun-Neptune trine also relates to the fact
that everything about him – musically, physically,
personally – served his overall image. While his Sun-Saturn
conjunction reflects the essence of his laid-back ambivalence,
the Neptune trine gives those qualities style and appeal.
In
Let’s Get Lost, screenwriter Lawrence Trimble
commented on the particular magic behind Baker’s
image: “Here
was this name “Chet”, which is kind of a soft
sound. The way he played, what he looked like, his name – it
all went together.” (9)
Bibliography
Deep
in a Dream: The Long Night of Chet Baker (James Gavin,
Alfred A. Knopf 2002)
Chet Baker: His Life and Music (Jeroen de Valk, Berkeley
Hills, 2000)
Notes
1
Michael Tierney quotes B.C. in the biographical film "Let's
Get Lost."
2 Gavin, p. 67
3 Lyrics by Lorenz Hart, courtesy of http://www.stlyrics.com/lyrics/coldfeet/myfunnyvalentine.htm
4 Gavin, p. 94
5 Gavin, p.58
6 Baker, unlike Davis and Gillespie, was Caucasian.
7 Transiting Uranus was conjunct his natal Sun and Saturn
at the time of his death.
8 http://home.ica.net/~blooms/cbsings.htm
9 Gavin, p. 92
|
