About

Every musician has his area of expertise and for Chet Baker that area was the ballad. Therefore, this album dedicated entirely to ballads, gives listeners a chance to hear Baker doing what he does best and when Chet Baker does what he does best, he does it better than any other trumpet player in the history of jazz.

For this session, recorded on the 30th of December 1958 at NYC’s Reeves Sound Studios, the poster child of West Coast cool jazz (who had just turned 29) assembled a superlative East Coast sextet that featured the unusual front-line combination of flute (Herbie Mann), trumpet (Baker) and baritone (Pepper Adams), departing occasionally from this format, however, to showcase the guitar playing of Kenny Burrell.

Bill Evans (piano), Philly Joe Jones (drums), Paul Chambers (bass), all well-known for their association with Miles Davis, and all some of the top names in jazz are also featured here, along with drummer Connie Kay of the Modern Jazz Quartet. Chet represents some of the last studio work Baker did before emigrating permanently to Europe. It also includes one of Baker’s own compositions, “Early Morning Mood,” recorded at the same studio and with the same line-up on the 19th of January 1959. – OJC