The Sunday Poem: “Chet Baker” by John Zheng
a veined leaf
shriveling
into a soft tune
of ‘Leaving’
...June 21st, 2025
chet baker
The Sunday Poem: “Remembering Chet Baker,” by Mark Donnelly
Listening recently to Chet Baker play and sing
“I’ve Never Been in Love Before”
on the local public radio jazz stream in Sacramento
sends me, thrills me, saddens me, deepens me
I want to jump in
I want to be there
the trumpet solo
the wondrous sound of notes.
December 21st, 2024
The Sunday Poem: “I Blame Chet Baker” by Lauren Loya
I blame Chet Baker
For opening a window into my past
Sensing that phantom trumpet in my capable hands
The smooth curves of the hard brass, the cold
Mouthpiece against my buzzing lips
Bright melodies blaring
From carefree days of my youth
October 15th, 2023
Interview with Alyn Shipton, author of The Gerry Mulligan 1950’s Quartets
In this May, 2023 interview, Shipton and Jerry Jazz Musician contributing writer Bob Hecht talk about Mulligan’s unique contributions to modern jazz.
...June 17th, 2023
“The Chet Set” – poems by Bernard Saint
In five poems, the poet writes of the music and complexity of trumpeter Chet Baker
...April 20th, 2023
News of an unreleased 1979 session by Chet Baker
News of a previously unreleased set of studio performances recorded in Holland in 1979 by legendary trumpeter Chet Baker
...March 31st, 2023
The Sunday Poem: “Always Cool” – by Judith Vaughn
The poet recalls the impact of Chet Baker’s music on her late, earlier life friend
...February 12th, 2023
“Blame It On My Youth” — a poem by Tim Tomlinson
You listen to Karrin Allyson sing “Blame It on My Youth,” you picture her in the throes of its May-December scenario. You picture her on a college campus. Columbia University, the steps in front of Low, a pleated skirt, a short bob, the full flush of love on her cheeks.
...September 7th, 2022
“Always Cool” — a poem by Judith Vaughn
. . Distributed by Joe Glaser’s Associated Booking Corporation. Photographer uncredited and unknown., Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons Chet Baker, 1955 . . Always Cool Alison weaves on her loom in the living room. Fifth floor walk up. Manhattan. Chet plays on the stereo; a trumpet divinely graced, caressed like a stunning woman’s body, soft … Continue reading ““Always Cool” — a poem by Judith Vaughn”
...June 29th, 2022
Trading Fours, with Douglas Cole, No. 1: Chet Baker’s “Night Bird”
I had a little radio up on top of the refrigerator, and I turned it on as the sunlight went and the world filled up with darkness. I listened to a jazz station and smoked a cigarette and blew the smoke out the window.
...November 18th, 2021
“Chet Baker’s Grave” – a poem by Freddington
A marker for memory,
a last thought,
for the trumpet that opened the gates
at the end of the world,
and passed on into forever.
August 9th, 2020
“Charles Ingham’s Jazz Narratives” — Vol. 5
Ingham’s “Jazz Narratives” connect time, place, and subject in a way that ultimately allows the viewer a unique way of experiencing jazz history. This edition’s narratives are “The Annunciation of Chet Baker,” “Frank O’Hara Whispers to Scott LaFaro,” and “Blessing the Child.”
...April 17th, 2020
“Tenderly” — a poem by Patricia Carragon
Chet Baker’s trumpet sings
unrestricted airwaves
in a senseless world
lonely trees by the promenade
wooden arms and hands
feel wind’s breath
March 26th, 2020
“Charles Ingham’s Jazz Narratives” — Vol. 1
These photo-narratives are provocative, meaningful and brilliant – connecting time, place, and subject in a way that ultimately allows the viewer a unique way of experiencing jazz history.
...February 17th, 2020
“Up in the Attic” — a poem by Alan Yount
stepping up the stairway
I carry my trumpet up here
*****
up here in the partial dark
at seventy-two years
December 31st, 2019
Veryl Oakland’s “Jazz in Available Light” — photos (and stories) of Yusef Lateef and Chet Baker
Jerry Jazz Musician regularly publishes a series of posts featuring excerpts of the photography and stories/captions found in Jazz in Available Light by Veryl Oakland. In this edition, Mr. Oakland’s photographs and stories feature Art Pepper, Pat Martino and Joe Williams.
...September 11th, 2019
“For Chet Baker, Trumpet Player, at Age Twenty Four” — a poem by Alan Yount
FOR CHET BAKER, TRUMPET PLAYER, AT AGE TWENTY FOUR I saw a picture of you, in 1954 on the today t.v. show with host dave garroway. you both looked so happy. dave held up his own trumpet too. your trumpet playing was being witnessed & … Continue reading ““For Chet Baker, Trumpet Player, at Age Twenty Four” — a poem by Alan Yount”
...December 7th, 2018
“The Color of Jazz” — an essay by Bob Hecht
The late, great trumpeter Clark Terry once offered one of the most pointed, and humorous, comments about the perennial controversies in jazz over race and the perceived abilities of white versus black musicians…
He said, “My theory is that a note doesn’t give a
...August 16th, 2018
“Halima and Chet” — a poem by dan smith
Halema
with the soulful jazz eyes
deep dreaming the notes
January 5th, 2018
“When You Fell Out of a Window” — a poem (for Chet Baker) by Alan Yount
when you fell out of a window
… you made me give up on you.
(maybe I shouldn’t have).
when the movie about you
recently came out: all of us
believed ethan hawke
was you, in “born to
June 22nd, 2017
“Chet Baker Sang” – a poem by John McCluskey
Chet Baker Sang
in velvety slender voice
thin on gender identification
thick with fracture-able delicacy
scared it could fall away forever at it’s very next note.
Wispy high clouds of mellifluous tones,
...May 25th, 2016
“Chet Baker and his Abandoned Shadows” — an essay and poem by Arya F. Jenkins
We like to immortalize talent in this culture, and in so doing, often decontextualize it, absolving it of complexity and stains. Media especially likes to make angels out of demons, and vice versa, stripping the truth out of images and ideas.
In the case of Chet Baker, William Claxton’s photographs helped especially to immortalize the singer and trumpeter, fixing him in time and space, freezing an idea of him as beautiful, ethereal, ideal.
Chet Baker is almost always remembered as the
...January 10th, 2016
“Chet Baker” — a poem by Jack Peachum
Tumbling out of the second story window —
an accident, I swear — passing the first floor,
and, “You’ll never make it as a musician, Chet!”,
an endless string of notes plays by my ear,
one solo interlude strung out forever,
reaching, reaching, for the ultimate chord,
my sideman lost in a tinkle of piano keys,
the percussion of the vibraphone,
July 10th, 2015
Short Fiction Contest-winning story #37: “Homage,” by Kenneth Levine
New Short Fiction Award
Three times a year, we award a writer who submits, in our opinion, the best original, previously unpublished work.
Kenneth Levine of Wethersfield, Connecticut is the winner of the thirty-seventh Jerry Jazz Musician New Short Fiction Award, announced and published for the first time on November 5, 2014.
Homage
by
Kenneth Levine
_______________________________
I deplaned in Amsterdam to confront my father. In 1990, the year I was born, after the likes of Stan Getz and Freddie Hubbard dubbed him “the reincarnation of Chet Baker,” he quit his part-time job repairing cars in Gilbert, Iowa to go on a worldwide tour from which he never returned.
From the airport I boarded a train to Centraal Station, across from which the Prins Hendrik hotel is situated at the Northern end of Zeedijk Straat, and by early evening I had navigated through the designated lanes over which walkers, bicyclists, and motorists coursed to stand before a bronze tablet on the hotel’s brick front that featured a haggard Chet Baker playing the trumpet over an inscription that read: “Trumpet player and singer Chet Baker died here on May 13th, 1988. He will live on in his music for anyone
...November 5th, 2014
“My Funny Valentine”
So many great songs to choose from for marking Valentine’s Day…The standard that most immediately comes to mind is an obvious choice, Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart’s “My Funny Valentine.” Written for their 1937 Broadway musical Babes in Arms, the piece was overshadowed on Broadway (and in the film version starring Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland) by “Where or When,” “I Wish I Were in Love Again,” and “The Lady is a Tramp,” and was not made relevant until Frank Sinatra’s recording of it in 1953. It was eventually recorded by more than 600 artists on countless albums, and became synonymous with Chet Baker, who recorded it over 100 times. Will Friedwald, author of Stardust Melodies: The Biography of Twelve of America’s Most Popular Songs — an entertaining and essential work of popular music history — wrote that “the tune could be said to follow Baker from the grave, since it’s usually included in memorial tributes to him.”
Friedwald writes, “What makes the whole [song] so remarkable is the happy/sad nature of the lyric, brilliantly mirroring the major/minor nature of the music. It’s a love song, but far from those ‘I love you and everything’s rosy’ tunes so popular in the twenties (vis-a-vis Iriving Berlin’s ‘Blue Skies’). It’s vaguely optimistic, but it couldn’t
...February 14th, 2014
Great Encounters #8: When Chet Baker played with Stan Getz, 1953
Excerpted from Deep in a Dream: The Long Night of Chet Baker by James Gavin
On August 12, the (Baker) quartet made its earliest known live appearance in a concert at LA’s Carlton Theater. But not everybody trusted Baker to stand on his own. With (Gerry) Mulligan in jail, John Bennett had paired Baker with Stan Getz, another baby-faced wunderkind whose feathery, cascading solos, even more detached than Baker’s, had made him a fellow prince of West Coast cool. Getz had won the 1952 tenor polls in Down Beat and Metronome by a landslide, while Baker still ranked low in the trumpet categories. The two addressed each other politely enough, but they loathed each other almost on sight, as their live duo recordings suggest:
...August 31st, 2004
Interview with Will Friedwald, author of Stardust Melodies: A Biography of Twelve of America’s Most Popular Songs
In Stardust Melodies: A Biography of Twelve of America’s Most Popular Songs, author Will Friedwald takes these legendary songs apart and puts them together again, with unprecedented detail and understanding. Each song’s history is explored — the circumstances under which it was written and first performed — and then its musical and lyric content.
...August 2nd, 2002
James Gavin, author of Deep in a Dream: The Long Night of Chet Baker
That trumpeter Chet Baker was a sensitive musician whose sound is a cherished part of the jazz landscape is well known. That he led a hard life is also pretty well known, perhaps even to the most casual music fan. His 1988 death from a fall out an Amsterdam window only added to the sad mystery surrounding his persona.
What was not known by most of us is the haunting depth of Baker’s self-destructive life; that he was an arsonist, a thief, a second-story man, a drug addict, an abusive husband and lover, a philanderer, a liar…need we go on? We could, you know.
...June 12th, 2002
Bill Moody, author of Looking for Chet Baker
Bill Moody’s background as a musician and his talents as a writer have made the Evan Horne Mysteries a favorite of jazz aficionados and crime-fiction fans alike. Investigating the death of Chet Baker, a major cult figure in the world of music, brings out the best in both the author and his pianist sleuth, Evan Horne. Looking for Chet Baker is his fifth Evan Horne mystery.
...April 10th, 2002
Jeroen de Valk, author of Chet Baker: His Life and Music
Chet Baker was a star at 23 years old, winner of the Critics as well as Readers Poll in Down Beat. But much of his later life was shadowed by his drug use and problems with the law.
Chet Baker: His Life and Music gives an account of the famous trumpeter – famous as much for his tragic life as his beautiful music. In our interview, conducted via e-mail, author Jeroen de Valk talks about Baker, the life he led, the people he touched, and the legacy he left.
...March 29th, 2001
Your Support is Appreciated
Click here to read about plans for the future of Jerry Jazz Musician.
In this Issue
Editor’s Notes
Poetry
The Sunday Poem
The Sunday Poem: “That Southern Sound,” by Anthony Ward
The Sunday Poem is published weekly, and strives to include the poet reading their work...
Jerry Jazz Musician editor Joe Maita reads Anthony Ward’s poem at its conclusion.
Click here to read previous editions of The Sunday Poem
Performance
Short Fiction
Poetry
Community
Poetry
Interview
Feature
Poetry
Feature
Poetry
Interview
Short Fiction
Feature
Community
Poetry
Short Fiction
Poetry
Feature
Short Fiction
Jazz History Quiz
Poetry
Contributing Writers
Coming Soon
Interview Archive
