Chet Baker Re:Imagined by Various Artists
'Chet Baker Re:imagined'
Rated strictly by technique, the late Chet Baker wouldn’t make the Top 10 on lists of the best jazz singers or the best jazz trumpeters. By mystique, however, he’d rank high on both lists as a Hollywood-handsome man who melted ice into cool jazz during the 1950s.
More than 70 years after he established doomed-romantic bona fides with 1954’s Chet Baker Sings, an assembly of artistes born after the 1950s—and many born after he fell from a hotel window to his death in 1988—approach his legacy on Chet Baker Re:Imagined, 15 tracks he did not write but did help transcribe into the Great American Songbook.
They favor Baker’s softly phrased singing rather than his stronger instrumental playing. English singer-songwriter Dodie adds clarinet to her sly samba-sashay version of “Old Devil Moon.” Filipino-Australian singer Grentperez sails through “But Not for Me.” Dutch singer Benny Sings moves very close to the inner ear on a whimsical “Time After Time.”
Gauzily sensuous exhalations, like those beautifully emitted by Eloise during “That Old Feeling,” sink deeper into Baker’s style than supper-club histrionics, like those skillfully, politely lunged after by Joel Culpepper throughout “Look for the Silver Lining.”
A handful of contributors leave out vocals: Nigerian-English trumpeter Ife Ogunjobi lays slicked-back Afrobeat funkiness over “Speak Low,” and London-born trumpeter Poppy Daniels emphasizes Herb Alpert playfulness on “I’ve Never Been in Love Before.”
The most striking remakes here don’t feature trumpet at all. English-Canadian musician and producer Matt Maltese bathes the words of “My Funny Valentine” in a mist of guitars and drums, while South London habitue Puma Blue floats within “It’s Always You” in a detuned haze of indie-rock gloominess a la the Posies and Low.
Wherever these artistes are from, geographically and artistically, they all seem to understand that Chet Baker derived mystique from mood and used his techniques as tools to craft that mood. On Re:Imagined, they test their moods and tools against his transcriptions.
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Purchase Chet Baker: Reimagined on Amazon here.
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