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'Deep In A Dream: The Long Night Of Chet Baker' by James Gavin

Deadly addictions devastated the career of trumpeter Chet Baker

Sunday, June 02, 2002

By Bob Hoover, Post-Gazette Book Editor

	Deep In A Dream: The Long Night Of Chet Baker By James Gavin Knopf $26.95

The discovery of the 1950s as an era unfairly labeled as dull is quickly becoming a cottage industry of cultural activity, from the nostalgic fashions of Ralph Lauren to renewed interest in the literature of Patricia Highsmith.

Overlaying most references to the ’50s is the sound of jazz, the distinctive atmospheric playing of Parker, Monk, Gillespie, Brubeck and a skinny blond trumpet player from Oklahoma, Chet Baker.

Breaking out in his early 20s with Gerry Mulligan’s group in 1952 as the epitome of the cool “West Coast Jazz,” Baker became the first jazz pinup boy.

His baby-faced yet faintly dangerous look cast him in the same mold as James Dean, and his withdrawn, aloof style on stage spelled “hip” to a generation puzzling out the writing of the Beat Generation after a steady diet of squares like Sandburg and Hemingway.

As we learn in this roughly textured biography by James Gavin, who’s written widely on jazz performers, Baker’s style was rooted in the insecurities of a limited life, both emotionally and musically.

The son of a struggling couple who followed Steinbeck’s Joads to California, Baker had little education in music, learning and developing his style largely by imitation and his considerable natural talents.

Although scorned by the more intense Miles Davis, Baker would often be compared to the iconoclastic trumpet player at certain times in his long career.

Usually, though, Baker stuck to the melodic, simple playing of his Mulligan days but infusing his sound with an emotionalism that touched thousands.

Then, when he began singing, his plaintive and frequently flat voice seemed to reflect a life of loneliness and pain.

His trademark “My Funny Valentine” (nicely imitated by Matt Damon in the film “The Talented Mr. Ripley,” based on a Highsmith novel) became a staple of his act.

Baker’s body was found beneath his Amsterdam hotel window on May 13, 1988. He was 58, his pretty-boy looks ravaged by a lifetime of heroin and a beating that cost him his upper teeth.

He had abandoned four children, three wives, two longtime lovers and a legion of alienated colleagues, all sacrificed for a fix.

Gavin estimated that at the time of his death, Baker was taking daily “three to four times the intake of a typical junkie -- combined with lots of coke.”

He had been arrested countless times since the 1950s on drug charges and had done jail time in America and Europe.

Baker’s life revolved around getting high; he played and recorded anywhere for a few dollars to make a buy, often hocked his horn for heroin cash and committed break-ins and petty thefts, becoming a skilled “second-story man” and lock picker along the way, Gavin claims.

Yet women and jazz fans, particularly in Europe, were devoted to him despite his abusive behavior. He left girlfriend Ruth Young penniless after she emptied her trust fund to support his habit.

He was often late or missing for concerts, and when he did show up, he gave indifferent and, at times, embarrassing performances. Most of his playing days after Mulligan were spent in Europe, where the critics were kinder and the drugs easier to find.

Gavin doggedly follows Baker from one unpleasant act to another across three decades, drawing a complex picture of the musician from a wide variety of sources.

He is also generous in his opinion of Baker as trumpet player, a talent that somehow emerged from behind his heroin-induced mask of cool. What hurt his reputation are the many cheap and inadequate recordings Baker made to find a quick buck, Gavin says.

The result is a balanced, almost model biography of a symbolic figure. At times in his zeal to portray Baker’s wasted life, his biographer piles up more examples than we need or reveals his moral revulsion at Baker’s behavior.

Gavin also is critical of Bruce Weber, the Greensburg, Pa., native whose documentary film on Baker, “Let’s Get Lost,” reawakened interest in the musician. From supplying Baker with cash to buy drugs before filming his interviews to exploiting his family, Weber scripted a distorted image of Baker that emphasized his wasted life while ignoring his musical contributions, Gavin says.

For jazz fans, “Deep in a Dream” is a tough read, a searing portrait of a talented junkie who had long ago traded his soul for dope.