FULLER UP HOME GRIM REAPER PAGE CAUSES OF DEATH SEARCH BY NAME GET IN TOUCH SHAMEFUL DISCLAIMER    Fuller Up, The Dead Musician Directory Chet Baker Chet Baker  Defenistration May 13, 1988 Age 58 OBITUARY  BIOGRAPHY   LINKS                                                   Contribute and get your name on the Chet Baker Monument

OBITUARY 

The following account was sent in by Bob Hagen     This is what happened to Chet in my opinion.  There was no question of murder because the room Chet fell out of was  locked from the inside and there was no sign of struggle.  Probably it was no suicide either. To get some air, Chet opened the  sash-window for about 40 centimeters and he sat on the window-sill. To  prevent the window from closing he put a piece of wood between the  window and the window-sill. This piece of wood broke and the window fell  down on Chets back (I opened it myself so I felt how heavy the window  was). He tried to get hold of something because he had the chain (to  fasten the window with) in his hand when he was found on the pavement  below his room. He fell on concrete pile and he died.

 

 

BIOGRAPHY

Chet Baker  Chet Baker   b. Chesney H. Baker, 23 December 1929, Yale, Oklahoma, d. 13 May 1988, Amsterdam, Holland.         Few musicians have embodied the romantic, and ultimately tragic, jazz figure as totally        as Chesney "Chet" Baker (1929-88). Unschooled yet eloquent in his music, and a fast liver        who somehow managed to survive for nearly six decades, the Baker mystique has only        reinforced one of the most haunting trumpet styles and ingenuous approaches to jazz singing.       Baker, who never learned to read music, got his training in army bands, where he developed a spare and       introverted voice on the horn. The Oklahoma native gravitated to Los Angeles after his discharge, and beat out all       of the local competition in an audition for a short tour with Charlie Parker in 1952. Later that year, he began       working with Gerry Mulligan in a quartet that established an instant personality through the absence of a piano and       the intriguing counterpoint between trumpet and baritone sax. An early recording of "My Funny Valentine" by the       Mulligan quartet caused a national sensation and made the fragile sound of Baker's horn emblematic of an entire       "cool" attitude.       In 1953, Baker began a recording and performing relationship with pianist Russ Freeman that solidified his status       as a major jazz star. One key to this success was Baker's singing, which sustained the wistful vulnerability of his       trumpet work. Baker's good looks and growing reputation for high living also fed his notoriety, although a growing       frequency of drug incidents (including one that claimed the life of pianist Richard Twardzik during a 1955       European tour by Baker's quartet) soon began to overshadow Baker's playing. Yet somehow, in this period as       later in his career, Baker was able to keep his music under control, and to incorporate any technical lapses into the       fabric of his image.       While the cool label became a Baker trademark, he was in fact a modern trumpeter who could play with the       hardest boppers, as several recordings made in New York during the late Fifties demonstrate. By decade's end,       Baker was living in Europe, where he hoped to pursue a film career as well as music; but further drug problems led       to a prison sentence in Italy and set Baker upon the peripatetic lifestyle that he pursued for the next quarter       century. He returned to the U.S. in 1964, where he made several fine albums with George Coleman and Kirk       Lightsey. Then his career seemed permanently ended in 1968, when Baker lost his teeth in an altercation with       other junkies in San Francisco. He stopped playing for two years, then resurfaced again in New York in 1973,       where he renewed his recording career. Much of his final decade was spent in Europe, often working with a trio       completed by guitar and bass. Always in need of money to support his addictions, and still widely popular, Baker       became one of the most voluminously documented jazz artists in history during the 1980s.       Prior to his mysterious death in Amsterdam, where he fell out of a hotel window, Baker was the subject of Bruce       Weber's film Let's Get Lost, a fascinating study of hero worship and self-destruction.     Fantasy

 

 LINKS

Jesper Svarre's Tribute UCI Bookstore Bio and Discography Jazz House discography and audio Jazz Central Station Chet Page Enja Chet profile German Chet Site