• Home
  • About
    • Doug Ramsey
    • Rifftides
    • Contact
  • Purchase Doug’s Books
    • Poodie James
    • Take Five: The Public and Private Lives of Paul Desmond
    • Jazz Matters
    • Other Works
  • AJBlogs
  • ArtsJournal
  • rss

Rifftides

Doug Ramsey on Jazz and other matters...

Monday Recommendation: Chet Baker Biography Revised

Jeroen de Valk: Chet Baker, His Life And Music (Aspekt)

de Valk has revised his 2000 biography of the trumpeter. The new version includes a comprehensive index that is helpful to readers. It has a selection of new photographs of Baker on the bandstand, with family, and in times of trouble growing out of the heroin addiction that more than once made him a subject of sensational news coverage. de Valk emphasizes that the musician did not consider drugs a problem; to him they were simply a part of the way he chose to live his life. de Valk is not a Baker apologist. He is unsparing in evaluating disastrous comeback albums like Albert’s House and a series of Tijuana Brass knockoffs. He places Baker in the jazz spectrum as “…an isolated phenomenon, a one-of-a-kind. He was not a big innovator – he just invented his own playing.” That’s achievement enough, one would think.

Related

Doug Ramsey

Doug is a recipient of the lifetime achievement award of the Jazz Journalists Association. He lives in the Pacific Northwest, where he settled following a career in print and broadcast journalism in cities including New York, New Orleans, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle, Portland, San Antonio, … [MORE]

Subscribe to RiffTides by Email

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Archives

Recent Comments

  • Rob D on We’re Back: Pianist Denny Zeitlin’s New Trio Album for Sunnyside
  • W. Royal Stokes on We’re Back: Pianist Denny Zeitlin’s New Trio Album for Sunnyside
  • Larry on We’re Back: Pianist Denny Zeitlin’s New Trio Album for Sunnyside
  • Lucille Dolab on We’re Back: Pianist Denny Zeitlin’s New Trio Album for Sunnyside
  • Donna Birchard on We’re Back: Pianist Denny Zeitlin’s New Trio Album for Sunnyside