Chet Baker / AT CAPOLINEA

The tone he produces on his instrument can only be described as luscious and in combination with his seemingly effortless improvisations he found a purity in music he failed to find in life. Baker, an autodidact, had a startling musical gift, as these tracks show, but it was a gift that he took for granted and abused. As film composer Piero Umiliani, who had Baker play on four of his film soundtracks between 1958 and 1964, observed ‘He was a sad and dramatic man, his only joy was to play’. It really does add force to the maxim that there is no art in attempting to construe the mind’s construction from music.