Label: Decca
Reissued 8/30/2024
In October 1955, Chet Baker and his Quartet were to give a series of concerts, notably in France. Many French people expected a playboy and dilettante trumpeter to get off the plane; the man who arrived was someone who lived only for, and by, his art. A first album recorded in Paris placed him in the jazz avant-garde; the series of recordings that followed formed the private journal of someone so incapable of hiding his emotions that he sublimated them in the only way he knew: in music. Titled Chet Baker and His Quintet with Bobby Jaspar, Volume Three brings together music from a few different sessions recorded between October 25, 1955 and February 1, 1956. However, only one session (December 26) contains Jaspar on tenor saxophone, performing "Chik-Eta" and "How About You?" The other sessions feature Baker leading groups with variable formation: quartet (performing "Alone Together," "Exitus," "Once in a While"), quintet (with Jean-Louis Chautemps on tenor performing "Tasty Pudding" and "Anticipated Blues") or octet (performing "Chet," "Dinah," "Vline"). Despite being construed as a poor relation opposite the others in the trilogy, this last volume contains performances that are among the most beautiful that Chet Baker produced during this period.
Track listing:
- How About You
- Once In A While
- Chekeetah
- Alone Together
- Chet
- Dinah
- Tasty Pudding
- Anticipated Blues
- Vline
- Exitus