Chet Baker Sings

1954  ·  Pacific Jazz  ·  Album

The voice that made vulnerability sound like the most elegant thing in the room.

There are very few voices in recorded music that operate at the frequency Chet Baker’s does on this album — intimate to the point of confession, and technically impeccable in a way that never announces itself. Recorded in 1954 when Baker was twenty-four, the album catches him at the peak of his particular gift: a sound that seems to come from somewhere just behind the microphone, slightly too close, slightly too honest. The arrangements are spare — piano, bass, drums, occasionally a few reeds — and they give his voice room to do what it does. My Funny Valentine is here, in the version that made the song permanently his. But the lesser-known tracks carry equal weight. The whole album is of a piece.

Play it late, when the apartment is quiet and the evening has run out of things to do. It is one of those records that improves with attention — the more you listen, the more you notice what is not being played, the space that the musicians are leaving for the voice to occupy. It suits a certain kind of melancholy that is not unpleasant — the melancholy of a night that is going well but will eventually end. Best heard alone, or with someone comfortable enough that silence between the tracks needs no filling.

---

VERDICT  ·  Seventy years old and still the most intimate record in the room.

POUR  ·  A gin martini, stirred. Or nothing at all — this album doesn’t need accompaniment.

---

Planning an evening around this? The Vinyl and Nothing Else →