This vinyl album, featuring tracks cut during Chet Baker’s peak years, illustrates that whatever the critics argued about in their various discourses regarding his vocal delivery, there could be no criticism of the material with which he became associated. So many of his songs stemmed from the pages of the Great American Songbook. Songs such as Cahn and Styne’s I Fall In Love Too Easily and Time After Time reflect Baker’s love of Frank Sinatra’s early films. These ballads first appearing in Anchors Aweigh (1944) and It Happened in Brooklyn (1946) respectively. Perhaps there was something with the American Songbook lyrics that struck a chord with those who followed the saga that was Chet’s life – the drug-addled existence that provided both dreams and nightmares. Once dubbed ‘The James Dean Of Jazz’, one of jazzdom’s greatest stars, albeit one who never really figured out his way in life, he once declared: “I don’t know if I’m a trumpet player who sings or a singer who plays trumpet.”
