Can you listen to Chet Baker and not fall in love? It seems improbable. The trumpeter rose to fame in the 1950s with his languid, cool jazz and broken hearted vocal stylings (it didn’t hurt that he looked like Jimmy Dean). Legend has it that Charlie Parker heard him and called Miles Davis and Dizzy Gillespie to alert them to the new competition. Baker’s career fizzled out in years of heroin addiction, until the point, near the end of his life, when he was tracked down by photographer Bruce Weber—who documented his last tour and put old Chet up against archives. The film is achingly tender, steeped in beautiful music and black and white photography; a love letter to a lost soul.
Chet Baker is my favourite vocalist of the [20th] century… he’s the only singer I’ve ever been able to identify with. I love the fact he’s so expressive, so overemotional. It’s classic stuff; it makes me soft in my knees… He was so into it: like, ’Fuck those notes I’m singing, and fuck those songs I’m singing – what I want is the emotion.’ That’s how I feel about it too.
Björk
The finest jazz movie ever made.
David Parkinson, Empire Magazine
A gorgeous gravestone for the Beat Generation’s legacy of beautiful-loser chic.
Jim Ridley, The Village Voice
Bruce Weber
Chet Baker, William Claxton
USA
1988
English
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