Chet Baker

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q0ZBaZoBCaA

After a long day spent having to struggle to keep a mask up in front of people and having to constantly wrestle with uncertainty inside your head, beating yourself up because you think you are not as smart or as talkative or as beautiful or as creative or as special as the other people around you are, you can come back home, melt into glorious solitude, kick your shoes off, let your hair down, peel your mask off and put some Chet Baker on and forget yourself – forget yourself – forget yourself – let the music go to your head like a glass of champagne.

It is the sublime artistry of his trumpet playing that naturally, to the envious admiration of many others, seems to effortlessly encapsulate the flamboyant spark of early Louis, the lyrical finesse of Bix, the technicality of Miles and the whole history of Jazz music rolled into one tone yet undeniably manage to sound so unique, so new, so fresh, like no other…

There Will Never Be Another Chet Baker. A classic, tragic, romantic hero with an angelic voice that defies the assaults of time, transcends you and drifts you away on sound-waves into a different world. A voice that is overlooked, slightly on the flat side, unadorned and without vibrato…but so beautiful…so moving…a voice amplified by experience, commentating on the human condition, excavating love’s ruin and exposing the sadness of naïve optimism

A sound, a soul that appeals to the long chain of anguish we all feel deep inside our consciousness. It fills me with boundless joy, it makes me reflect, makes me feel bright eyed and innocent, it makes me weep, makes me calm enough to fall asleep.

It makes me want to run away, escape the mundane, catch a plane, play the trumpet, start a Jazz group in Los Angeles, San Francisco somewhere near the luscious, hush of the palm trees of the West Coast. The beach, the sea, go to those lights glowing over there at the fun fair in the distance where there are coconut stands, candyfloss, dizzy bumper cars, a carousel, a ghost train and the tranquil heights of a ferris wheel…
Where happens a magic chance encounter with a fascinating young stranger wearing a black and white polka dot dress who capriciously clings onto me, takes me by sweet surprise as she takes hold of my hand and softly smiles promise into my eyes. Awakens butterflies. Makes my heart fill up like a balloon about to burst as her rosebud lips tenderly whisper; “Let’s defrost in a romantic mist, let’s get crossed off everybody’s list – to celebrate this night we found each other…mmm…let’s get lost.”…shame this dream has to abruptly stop, last only three minutes and 54 seconds before I realise I am still up in my room, alone, still staring up at the ceiling…just breathing…with red raw, sleepless eyes still open past the dawn.

How can someone, who you have never met, who was born back in 1929, born and raised in Oklahoma, more than 4,000 miles away from here and who has been dead for 24 years…feel so near? Feel so close that they touch the most intimate parts of your heart - that no one else knows - and finally let you be the primitive, emotional creature that you really are.