Chet Baker's 1950s Trumpet and Vocal Sides on Pacific Jazz

Being among the first jazz records I ever heard, Chet Baker's trumpet-and-vocal sides for Pacific Jazz of the early- to mid-1950s will always have a special place in my heart. But beyond the purely personal, these recordings, made at various studios in Los Angeles between 1953 and 1956, are some of the most perfectly crafted sides of Baker's celebrated career. Baker is definitely a singer like no other: in the liner notes to Let's Get Lost: The Best of Chet Baker Sings, a 1989 CD containing 20 of Baker's Pacific Jazz vocal tracks, critic Will Friedwald describes his approach to vocalizing as "that rara avis that's a great deal more disarming than most items which demand that adjective." Disarming is, indeed, a very appropriate way to describe both Baker's playing and singing. His singing is never exuberant and always self-contained, revealing a kind of melancholy and shyness that's appealing precisely because, as Friedwald notes, it's emotionally disarming. When he sings, perhaps more so than when he plays, Baker emphasizes his most vulnerable side, almost whispering languidly sometimes, as though he were being overheard by the microphone. In this sense, Baker is more of a crooner than one might think at first. Unlike when he's playing his trumpet, when he's vocalizing, Baker seldom strays too far away from the melody and always succeeds in putting across the lyrics in a most effective way.

On most of the 20 tracks of this best-of vocal compilation, Baker is on vocals and trumpet (his obbligatos are sometimes overdubbed), leading a quartet that also includes Russ Freeman on piano and occasionally celesta, Carson Smith on bass, and Bob Neel on drums, although on some of the tunes we get to hear other musicians such as bassists Joe Mondragon and Jimmy Bond, and drummers Shelly Manne, Peter Littman, and Lawrence Marable. As expected, the repertoire draws from the Great American Songbook (the Gershwins, Hoagy Carmichael, Jerome Kern, Frank Loesser, Johnny Mercer, &c.) but many of the songs come courtesy of Hollywood songwriters such as Johnny Burke, Jimmy Van Heusen, and Buddy DeSylva. Baker seems to have taken many a cue from Frank Sinatra in these early years when his record label was still trying to take advantage of the fact that he was, well, rather easy on the eye, and not just on the ear. As a matter of fact, a surprising majority of the songs on this compilation are somehow related to The Voice, some of them ("Time After Time," "It's Always You," "Daybreak," "I Fall in Love Too Easily") even going back to Sinatra's years on Columbia and with Tommy Dorsey in the 1940s. Of course, "My Funny Valentine" is the quintessential Baker vocal record, with its sparse introduction and its introspective vocals and lovely trumpet solo, but there are other Baker classics here, such as "But Not for Me" (taken at a rather brisk tempo, with a memorable trumpet introduction), "Just Friends," "Let's Get Lost," "Long Ago and Far Away," "The Thrill Is Gone," and "That Old Feeling." The rest of musicians back Baker in a most sympathetic way, and pianist Freeman proves to be just as important to the overall sound of the proceedings as Baker himself. Without a doubt, these 20 classic sides demonstrate that singing was an important factor in Baker's rise to prominence in the 1950s, and it was something he clearly enjoyed doing, since he would keep vocalizing almost right up to the end of his career.

Howard McGhee Is Back in Town, 1961

Born in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in 1918, Howard McGhee was one of the most prodigiously talented trumpeters of his generation, on a par with legends like Dizzy Gillespie, and he was instrumental in bridging the gap between swing and bop. He was, however, a late comer to the instrument, having started out on the saxophone and the clarinet, but once he picked up the trumpet, there was no turning back. In the original liner notes to the album we're discussing today, Maggie's Back in Town, written by Nat Hentoff, McGhee attributes his tendency toward playing more notes than other trumpeters to the fact that he was a saxophonist and clarinetist first, and he also remembers that his parents weren't in the least pleased about his interest in jazz: "I used to sneak a radio into my room and listen to Roy [Eldridge] on the air. My folks were church people. They didn't like jazz, and they didn't want me to play it, but that was what I wanted to do, and nothing could stop me." Roy Eldridge and Louis Armstrong were his earliest influences, and he in turn influenced a host of trumpeters who came after, among them the great Clifford Brown. During the Swing Era, Maggie--such was his nickname, to which the title of the LP makes reference--was a member of several bands, including those led by Lionel Hampton, Andy Kirk, Charlie Barnet, Count Basie, and Georgie Auld, and he distinguished himself for his powerful, exciting style that can be heard, for example, on "McGhee Special," recorded while with Kirk. The year of 1945 marks a turning point in McGhee's career: he joined Coleman Hawkins and relocated to California, where he played countless live dates and cut some forward-looking records for Dial, including sessions with Charlie Parker. Bop classics such as "Rifftide" and "Stuffy" originated during these extremely important years.

Unfortunately, at the same time that his career was thriving, a host of drug-related problems began to dramatically affect his personal life, and as a result, McGhee's recordings throughout the 1950s are very scarce. He did make a worthy comeback album of sorts for Bethlehem in 1956, The Return of Howard McGhee (with Sahib Shihab, Duke Jordan, Percy Heath, and Philly Joe Jones), but it wasn't until 1961, when he released Maggie's Back in Town on Contemporary Records, that he was truly back on the scene--and this time to stay. The album was cut during the course of a single session, which took place in Los Angeles on June 26, 1961, and finds McGhee in the excellent company of pianist Phineas Newborn, Jr., bassist Leroy Vinnegar, and drummer Shelly Manne. Around this time, McGhee and Vinnegar had been playing at the Town Hill in L.A., and their mutual understanding is obvious on this recording, as is Maggie's affinity with Newborn. The opening track, "Demon Chase," is the only McGhee original, and it starts off with an interesting call-and-response structure that gives way to lovely solos by both McGhee and Newborn. Two of the tunes were composed by Teddy Edwards: his classic "Sunset Eyes" and "Maggie's Back in Town," which Edwards obviously wrote for this session and which is given a ten-minute treatment that allows for plenty of room for everyone to solo. There are also three standards ("Willow Weep for Me," "Softly, as in a Morning Sunrise," and "Summertime"), all of them taken at a rather brisk tempo, with McGhee mainly playing muted trumpet (except in the release of "Willow") and offering some inventive improvisation on the melodies with the help of Newborn and the rhythm section. Finally, the album closes with "Brownie Speaks," a masterfully played salute to Clifford Brown, a trumpeter that McGhee influenced and also deeply admired, both as a musician and as a composer. Though McGhee would cut a few more notable albums before his passing in 1987, this comeback LP that Original Jazz Classics reissued on CD 1991 remains one of his most enduring statements on record and is absolutely recommendable.

Richie Kamuca Quartet & Octet, 1957

Although those who still remember him today tend to identify him with the West Coast sound, tenor saxophonist Richie Kamuca was actually born in Philadelphia in 1930. Initially influenced by the stylings of the great Lester Young, Kamuca was able to develop a cool-toned sound that was all his own and highly recognizable. He began his professional career in the Roy Eldridge orchestra, and Eldridge would always remain one of his favorite musicians, with whom he'd stay in touch through the years. In the 1950s he worked with Stan Kenton and Woody Herman, and with the latter he made recordings as part of the famous Four Brothers, though he never achieved the recognition of fellow saxophonists Stan Getz and Zoot Sims. After settling in the West Coast, he cut a few fine albums that are still quite obscure today, perhaps because they were made for small labels like Mode and Hi-Fi. He was even paired with another notable tenorman, Bill Perkins, for a 1956 session that yielded the Pacific Jazz album Tenors Head-On, but in part his relative obscurity could be attributed to the fact that he appeared as a sideman on countless sessions led by the likes of Chet Baker, Marty Paich, and Mel Lewis, among others, but made very few records as a leader.

Most of Kamuca's most valuable work as a leader, though, was recorded in 1957, when he cut two albums that have been reissued by Fresh Sound Records on a 2010 CD entitled Tenor Ahead: Richie Kamuca Quartet and Octet. This includes Jazz Erotica (originally released with a rather kitschy cover featuring a picture of a nude model) and The Richie Kamuca Quartet, both recorded in Los Angeles. The former includes a few tracks ("Blue Jazz," "Stella by Starlight," "Linger Awhile," "It's You or No One") that find Kamuca in a quartet setting alongside Vince Guaraldi on piano, Monty Budwig on bass, and Stan Levey on drums. On some of the tracks ("Angel Eyes," "I Hadn't Anyone Till You," "The Things We Did Last Summer," for instance), this quartet becomes an octet with the addition of Bill Holman on baritone sax, Frank Rosolino on trombone, and Conte Candoli and Ed Leddy on trumpets, with Holman himself handling the arrangements and achieving a fuller sound. On the latter album, we find Kamuca in a quartet setting all the way, featuring Levey on drums again, but this time Carl Perkins is on piano and Leroy Vinnegar is on bass. Though there's only one Kamuca original ("Rain Drain"), this album is the most musically satisfying of the two and boasts a lovely uptempo version of "Just Friends" and wistful readings of the ballad standards "What's New" and "My One and Only Love." Throughout the 1960s and '70s, Kamuca did a great deal of studio work and became a member of the band on the Merv Griffin TV show, a job that he kept until his death from cancer in 1977. He also worked with drummer Shelly Manne and appears on the famous series of albums that the Manne band recorded live at the Blackhawk in San Francisco. Kamuca still had time to collaborate again with Roy Eldridge, and right before the end of his life, he made three fantastic albums for Concord that have yet to be reissued on CD. As already pointed out, Kamuca is one of many talented jazz musicians for whom recognition has been elusive partly because of their primary role as sidemen. But in his case, there's no doubt that the quality of his meager work as a leader is still begging for rediscovery, and hopefully this Fresh Sound reissue will help.