Chet Baker - In Tokyo [1987] (2 x CDs)

CHET BAKER

Chet Baker - In Tokyo [1987] (2 x CDs)

Chet Baker in Tokyo is a live album by jazz trumpeter and singer Chet Baker, recorded at Showa Women's University's Hitomi Kinen Kodo. Released only eleven months before his death, it has been hailed as, "A glorious moment in Chet Baker's twilight." (Wikipedia)

Like a number of live Chet Baker albums released over the last ten years, this one documents a concert that took place shortly before his tragic death (having recently resumed his drug habit, he fell from a hotel room window in 1988). Unlike most of them, though, this one shows him to have still been in complete control of his musical faculties, playing not just beautifully and well, but with energy and even speed despite his deteriorating health. His singing, too, sounds uncannily like that of the quiet young sex symbol he'd been in the 1950s, before age and heroin ravaged his face and emptied his eyes. Accompanied beautifully by pianist Harold Danko, bassist Hein Van Der Geyn and drummer John Engels, Baker plays a surprisingly varied set, from Jimmy Heath's hard bop standard "For Minors Only" to "Four" by Miles Davis and the delicately anguished "Almost Blue," written for him by Elvis Costello. Here he still plays with the sweet, dry tone that made him famous and helped to define an entire school of West Coast jazz, and sings in a voice remarkably similar to that of his trumpet. Given its context, you can't miss the poignancy of this recording; but the playing is so sweet and happy that it's also impossible to resist the spirit in which these performances were offered -- a spirit which was anything but sad. (AllMusic Review by Rick Anderson)

Although Miles Davis' masterpiece, "Kind of Blue," might be the most listened to jazz album of all time, and it deserves to be, jazz fans should take note that "Chet Baker in Tokyo" more than holds its own as far as musical quality and inventiveness are concerned.

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Track list

CD1

01 Chet Baker - Stella By Starlight 10:52

02 Chet Baker - For Minors Only 7:42

03 Chet Baker - Almost Blue 7:55

04 Chet Baker - Portrait In Black And White 15:48

05 Chet Baker - My Funny Valentine 13:14

CD2

01 Chet Baker - Four 7:30

02 Chet Baker - Arborway 14:02

03 Chet Baker - I'm a Fool To Want You 11:24

04 Chet Baker - Seven Steps To Heaven 7:58

05 Chet Baker - For All We Know 8:59

06 Chet Baker - Broken Wing 10:07

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