Here is an album with a spotty release issue, and it makes perfect sense when you have an artist like Chet Baker, who existed like the wind. If your window is open wide enough, he can be blown in from the Northern Winds, and of course, there have been numerous photographs of him with his trumpet among an open window sill, and we know how that ends. Like that cinematic version of a soiled or hurt soul, James Dean, our patron saint of things gone wrong, Chet Baker shared a lightness in a heavy world.
This album has two titles: Chet Baker With Fifty Italian Strings (1960) or Angel Eyes (1960, reissued in 2018). Chet was not always a consistent record maker, and a lot of his work dealt with whatever his situation was, narcotics or finances-wise. Giulio Libano arranged half of this album, and the other half was by Len Mercer, an Italian whose real name is Ezio Leoni. For me, the fully orchestrated strings and jazz don’t mix. Its lushness is used to support a falling Chet Baker. He doesn’t need the silkiness because his voice already conveys a comforting and sensual mood. Goodbye, on the other hand, is a beautiful conversation between the strings and Baker’s trumpet.
Although by chance or skill, and I do believe it’s a skill that, Chet can communicate with the sticky sweetness of the strings and somehow convey a character or a stance of emotional truth among the wallpaper music. The thing about Chet Baker is that once he opens his mouth and sings or plays the trumpet, he makes an individual sound that is very much his own. The surroundings can be doubtful, but Chet always comes off as sincere. Also, after these recordings he made in Italy, he was busted with heroin and had to spend a year in an Italian prison.
If there is one classic recording on this album, it’s Deep In a Dream. For one, it’s a beautiful lyric and music, but Baker brings out the stoned haze of a song that is romantic but also reflective in a narcotic manner of getting the first moment of a high. The only other version I have heard of this song is Frank Sinatra, and he, too, took it on a landscape where time doesn’t exist. Both versions are timeless in that there is a clock moving slowly in the singer's room. Sinatra takes it literally, and it is truly a dream for Chet Baker.
Nicely described....Chet is so superfine. And I suspect he survived the application of strings better than the divine Charlie Parker did when they were foisted on him by several producers...even though Bird still flew high...
Love this: "Chet Baker shared a lightness in a heavy world." Brilliant.
You might dig this Baker post I sent out last year:
https://sunra.substack.com/p/chet-baker-in-italy