Chet Baker: Chet Baker Sings & Plays (Blue Note Tone Poet series) [BLUE NOTE]

Why you'll love it

This Tone Poet edition was cut by Kevin Gray straight from the original analog tapes, pressed on 180g vinyl at RTI and housed in a deluxe tip-on jacket. The album split Baker between trumpet and voice, and AllMusic says it set his image as the jazz world's matinee idol.

This edition

• Blue Note Tone Poet series
• 180g vinyl
• Mono
• Mastered by Kevin Gray from the original analog tapes
• Pressed at RTI
• Tip-on jacket

About the album

After Chet Baker Sings, producer Richard Bock had a new problem: half his audience wanted the trumpet and half wanted the voice. His answer, recorded in Hollywood across two dates in early 1955, was to give them both on one record, with Baker's quartet on some tracks and a little chamber group with strings on the others. Most of the songs are romantic standards and torch songs, which suited him down to the ground.

Russ Freeman is at the piano throughout, Carson Smith and Red Mitchell share bass duties, and Bud Shank's flute drifts over four string arrangements by Johnny Mandel, Marty Paich and Frank Campo, with Corky Hale on harp. "Let's Get Lost" became one of Baker's calling cards, "Someone to Watch Over Me" and "You Don't Know What Love Is" are as hushed as torch songs get, and "Grey December" is pure late-night West Coast cool. William Claxton's photos fill the collage cover.

Joe Harley produced this reissue, and it sounds like the band is sitting just across the room. Played after dinner, it has a way of making the dishes wait until morning.

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

Tracklist

Listen

On Pacific Jazz / Blue Note (cat# B0034169-01), a reissue of the 1955 album.