Jazz legend Chet Baker would have turned 95 this year. To mark the occasion, Decca Records France is reissuing the trumpeter and vocalist’s trio of Chet Baker In Paris albums. Originally released on Barclay Records, the albums will be available on vinyl in a run of limited edition 180gm pressings, remastered from original master tapes and packaged with their original jackets and liner notes. Additionally, the complete Barclay sessions will be available digitally for the first time.
Baker, known as the Prince of Cool for his pioneering work in the cool jazz subgenre, arrived in Europe in October 1955 for a series of concerts with his quartet. During his time in Paris throughout late 1955 and early 1956, he recorded a wealth of music for the Barclay label at Studio Pathé-Magellan, emotionally charged sessions captured on the three Chet Baker In Paris LPs.
Volume One features music from the first two sessions at Pathé-Magellan, recorded on October 11 and 14, 1955 with a band including Richard “Dick” Twardzik on piano, Jimmy Bond on bass, and Peter Littmann on drums. The album largely comprises Baker’s interpretations of songs by Robert L. “Bob” Zieff, including “‘Rondette,” “Pièce-Caprice,” and “Sad Walk,” but makes room for the Twardzik composition “The Girl From Greenland,” an inclusion that would prove prescient and bittersweet.
Tragedy struck a week after the Volume 1 sessions were completed, as Twardzik died from an overdose. On October 24, 1955, just three days after Twardzik’s death, Baker returned to the studio with a heavy heart and a new quartet, joined by Bond on bass plus French pianist Gérard Gustin and Swedish drummer Nils-Bertil Dahlander (filling in Littman, who returned to America). For this session, which would become Volume 2, Baker chose eight standards including “These Foolish Things,” “Autumn In New York,” and “You Go To My Head,” each track haunted by grief over the loss of Baker’s friend and collaborator.
Further sessions recorded between October 25, 1955 and February 1, 1956 were compiled into Volume 3, otherwise known as Chet Baker And His Quintet With Bobby Jaspar. Jaspar, the tenor saxophonist, joined Baker’s quintet for a December 26 session, performing “Chik-Eta” and “How About You?” The rest of the album features various configurations of Baker’s quartet, quintet, and even a few songs as an octet. It adds up to a stirring document of a peerless talent at his peak.
