Chet Baker - Let's get lost

CHET - a 1959 Riverside recording which means a lot to me. I bought it somewhere along the way in the late '80s and it followed me ever since. If you consider to build up a jazz collection, this is a record not to be missed. Together with the incredible live recording In Tokyo (1987) certainly among my personal top ten Jazz recordings.

Promoted by Charlie Parker in the '50s, Chet Baker developed an extraordinary lyrical style of playing the trumpet, melodical floating and calm. West Coast Jazz at it's best.

At the same time Baker also developed a fatal lifetime addiction to hard drugs, namely heroin and cocaine. The heavy drug abuse not only let his musical abilities stagnate and decline during vast periods of his career, it also devastated his face and transformed it slowly into a ragged landscape.

I have always been fascinated by this incredible metamorphosis turning the face of a handsome looking young man into a distorted mask and tried over the years to capture it in a series of drawings.

Chet Baker 1988: Pencil, charcoal, ink on doublepaged A3/90g drawing paper.

The portrait shows Chet Baker in 1988, a couple of weeks before his death. Baker was hopelessly stuck in the Amsterdam drug swamp, got knocked his teeth out (likely due to unpaid drug debts) and was rendered unable to play. He was booked for a concert in Germany then (which turned out to be his last) and given a new set of teeth and a trumpet. That couldn't save him though, Chet Baker died on May 13th, 1988, allegedly falling out of the window of his Amsterdam hotel room. The true circumstances never have been resolved. 
A bright talent going down a very dark road.

Chet Baker in the '50s: Mixed media on A5/90g drawing paper