Chet Baker was born Chesney Henry Baker in Yale, Oklahoma on December 23, 1929, and moved to California together with his household as a baby, one of many 1000’s of “Okies” who got here West searching for a greater life. Baker started taking part in trumpet in grade faculty, and after a stint within the U.S. Military he acquired an enormous break when legendary jazz saxophonist Charlie Parker picked him to play in his band whereas on the West Coast. The following yr, Baker joined the Gerry Mulligan Quartet and helped popularize the cool jazz type.
Baker’s film star appears to be like, plaintive singing voice, and delicate trumpet taking part in pushed him to heart stage and it seemed as if this golden boy had it made. However then he started utilizing heroin. “I loved heroin very a lot, and used it regularly, in a single kind or one other, for the following 20 years,” Baker recalled in his autobiography, “Chet Baker: As Although I Had Wings.” Baker’s profession stalled for a decade amid his deepening drug dependence however he started a comeback within the Nineteen Seventies. He was on a tour of the Netherlands when he died.