When I had just started listening to Jazz at the age of eighteen or so, I had a very scant record collection. I had a John Coltrane Twofer called Black Pearls; Tom Scott and The LA Express; Erroll Garner ‘Concert By The Sea’ and perhaps a few others. My favourite pastime in those days was crate digging in used record stores. I also checked out any record section anywhere. One day in a Kresge’s or K Mart store in a mall in St.Jerome, Quebec I came across an artist I had never heard of. Chet Baker.

Something about the artwork and the handsome portrait drew me to this record. That, and the price of 69 cents. It was a “cutout”. A hole drilled in the corner and reduced to clear. I took it home and put it on my turntable in my bedroom and listened to each side in turn. I was attracted to the music. All Ballads. Some of the songs I had heard from my dad’s collection. Ella and Sinatra sang But Not For Me, My Funny Valentine, Summertime. I really liked that this was a quartet. Piano, Bass and Drums with Chet either playing trumpet or singing. His sultry androgynous voice delivered each song in a way that immediately connected with my soul. My collection today consists of 39 albums with Chet Baker as the leader(443 songs). Most of the albums are fairly high quality although some were just attempts to cash in for dope money. Chet, famously, was a notorious heroin addict. Even the ones where Chet is not 100 % have some redeeming qualities.

One night this week I was listening to Luciana Souza on her album “The Book Of Chet” which is a beautiful tribute to Chet’s memory and songs from his repertoire that are associated with him. One of those songs is “I Get Along Without You Very Well” by Hoagy Carmichael based on a poem by Jane Brown Thompson. which is a rueful ode to a lost love and the irony inherent in a statement that is untrue. Beautiful capture of a common life event. Luciana sings it well with a slight hint of her Brazilian accent. Her voice is sultry and her phrasing and pitch are excellent, but there was something missing. I went downstairs in the morning and put on Chet singing the song. To me, Chet’s version (from 1954) seems more believable. Chet’s pitch sometimes a bit flat, his frugal use of vibrato only on certain words. He wrenches the mixed emotion evoked in the lyric and tells the story as if it is his. I don’t mean too disparage Luciana. Hers is plaintive, reverent, perfect, professional, well recorded, sublime, in fact, but to me, it only made me desire to hear Chet’s original.

Chet starts off with a celeste intro (Celeste is a bell-piano…rare in jazz… best known for The Dance Of The Sugar Plum Fairy by Tchaikovsky) and Chet sings the first A section as if it is an aside. A soliloquy, A private moment. On the second A section Russ Freeman switches to piano and the whole rhythm section supports Chet’s singing gently in two, then some movement in the bass on the bridge. The outro ends with arco bass underpinning “break my heart in two”. A perfect little vignette of suffering and regret.

In my music program on my computer I have 16 different versions of this song from artists as disparate as Amos Lee and Chrissie Hynde, Jerry Jeff Walker, Linda Ronstadt, Kurt Elling, Kandace Springs and Diana Krall. I have four versions by Billie Holiday from very late in her career. Sublime. A second Chet Baker version from late in his career/life which is akin in feel to Billie Holiday. I know what came next and their tragic endings colour my impression of these versions. My favourite of the other versions is Sinatra”s which comes from one of the first concept albums ever “In The Wee Small Hours…” which was an artistic outpouring of his amorous troubles with Ava Gardner at that time. Frank’s version has Nelson Riddle’s strings underpinning his grief and is entirely believable. His emotional warble at times in this song sound unfeigned.

At the top of this blog is a photo of me with a Richard Avedon photo portrait of Chet Baker taken recently at the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Montreal. It got me to thinking about the different worlds of experience we bring to new experiences. Thousands of people passed by the Chet Baker photo daily, but I am sure I am probably the only one who stopped for a “selfie” because of my intimate relationship with this man’s music. The way I see and hear are unique to me and based on my soul and my experience. A photo of someone else at the exhibition did not stir up similar feelings although I was tempted by the photo of Dorothy Parker whose writings I love.

Likewise the way we hear music. A friend asked me last night if I could guide him on how to listen to Jazz. My listening experience is bordering on fanatical, but is curated. I know (now) what I like, and what I am willing to invest my time in. I have to think about how someone with a different set of experiences would proceed. Many years ago when I was studying music formally I met my brother at a Jazz bar and he said “I don’t understand Jazz”. He reads music, so I brought out my Real Book and showed him what was going on. The pianist was interpreting the melody of a standard. Not quite playing it straight. when the melody ended the rhythm section continued playing the changes and the soloist improvised new melodies over the chord changes. Fairly simple. He wrote me recently 45 years later and said he discovered Miles Davis’s ‘Kind Of Blue’. He said “Now I get it” …lol.

I enjoy watching people expand their knowledge and experience and especially when we can share a mutual love for a particular piece that has particular meaning for me. I feel honoured to have a part in it.