As a kid, Chet Baker’s favorite trumpet player was Dizzy Gillespie. So when Gillespie finally came through town, Baker got into the show and of course snuck backstage to find his hero. Gillespie put his arm around Baker tenderly while they talked, and the encounter would cement his dreams to pursue a career in jazz.
After a few years in the army, and then a few years studying music theory in college, Baker dropped out feeling as though he’d never really be able to fit in no matter where he went. All he wanted to do was play his trumpet. But in his mid-to-late-twenties he was introduced to heroin, which in his own words: “…brought me down, down, and I finished in jail, many times.”
Chet Baker Sings, originally released in 1954, broke the standard mold of modern jazz as an improvisational show of instrumental prowess. A true master of playability, Baker set down his horn and led his band in one million-dollar love ballad after another. Despite losing the faith of some critics, that year saw him win two of the famed Down Beat Magazine ‘Reader’s Polls,’ beating Miles Davis as “best trumpeter” and Nat King Cole as “best vocalist.” This garnered him the nickname of the “great white trumpet” and “the great white hope” of jazz. On a return trip to New York City, Charlie Parker told Miles Davis & Dizzy Gillespie: “You better watch out…there’s a little white cat out in California that’s gonna eat you up.”
But Baker’s drug addiction eventually proved stronger than his love of music. He was known to pawn his instruments when in need of money for drugs. A score went bad in 1968 when several men attacked him in the hotel where he would meet his dealer every day. At one point in the exchange he leapt into a stranger’s car in hopes of escape, but the other passengers pushed him back out into the street for fear of becoming involved. “All they had to do was drive off,” he said.
But because of the beating he took, only stubbles of teeth were left. He saw a doctor and one by one his teeth were pulled out, leaving him physically unable to play the trumpet. He took work as a gas station attendant, putting in brutal hours from 7AM to 11PM, six days a week. This monotonous way of life left him terribly depressed and desperate to find a way back to music. It took six months just to decide that he’d like to try playing again. From there, he had to relearn the strange new positioning of his lips and false teeth, a process that took three years of practice and exercise. It was Baker’s hero himself, Dizzy Gillespie, who made the call to land Baker a gig thereafter, his first return to New York City with the entire audience wondering if he could still play after his mysterious and much-talked-about absence.
Born to be Blue – Trailer