Chet Baker: My Funny Valentine (gatefold) [JAZZ IMAGES]

Why you'll love it

This limited Jazz Images edition comes in a gatefold jacket and gathers fourteen of Chet Baker's sung standards on one LP. "My Funny Valentine" became his signature song, and the album it first appeared on, Chet Baker Sings, entered the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2001.

This edition

• Limited edition
• Gatefold jacket

About the album

Chet Baker was already a star trumpeter when he asked to make a whole album of singing, and his producer Dick Bock was not convinced. Baker's mother had been asking him for years to sing more, and in the end she won. The soft, close-up voice he brought to those mid-1950s Pacific Jazz sessions became as famous as his horn, and it turned the young Californian into one of the faces of West Coast cool.

This set strings together the ballads that made his name. "My Funny Valentine" is the one everyone knows, a song he returned to for the rest of his career. "Let's Get Lost," "Like Someone in Love" and "Time After Time" glide along at an easy, unhurried pace, while "I Fall in Love Too Easily" and "Someone to Watch Over Me" are as hushed as jazz gets. "Moonlight Becomes You" and "Sweet Lorraine" carry the mood through to the end of side two.

It's late-night music for lamps turned low, and it works as well on a first listen as it does on the hundredth. We recommend it for candlelit dinners, though it does tend to make the washing up seem rather poignant.

Also at Kops: more Chet Baker on vinyl · browse Vocal Jazz

Tracklist

Listen

On Jazz Images (cat# 37066).