Chet Baker

Featuring: David Friedman, Buster Williams, Joe Chambers

condition (record/cover): NM / NM

The late Chet Baker is a genre unto itself: European studios, small groups, tempos that keep slowing down, and a trumpet tone worn so thin it becomes almost transparent. Peace is from that long final stretch, and the title is not decoration. Baker plays ballads here with the phrasing of a man who has stopped trying to prove anything to anybody, leaving enormous amounts of space and letting notes decay rather than resolving them. It should be unbearable and instead it is one of the most quietly devastating things in his discography. Whatever else was falling apart, this never did.

Be! Jazz pressing. For anyone who thinks they know the Chet Baker story and has only heard the fifties records.