SMOOTH AND COOL

Chesney Henry "Chet" Baker Jr. born Yale, Oklahoma, December 23, 1929 played trumpet, flugelhorn and did a little singing as well. At the age of 12 he learn to play trumpet. He played trumpet through junior high school, and on through college.

In 1946 he was drafted into the Army, and played in the Army band in Berlin.
After returning home, Baker continued his music education at El Camino College.
In 1952 he won an audition with Charlie Parker, then went on to join Gerry
Mulligan's pianoless quartet. The group performed regularly at
Hollywood. In

1953, Baker formed his own band featuring Russ Freeman on piano. The Chet Baker Quartet toured and recorded with great success. As the decade came to a close, Chet was addicted to heroin and his life was filled with arrests and scandals.

Baker's prominence rose during the cool jazz of the 50's. But his success was
badly hampered by drug addiction, particularly in the 1960s, he was
imprisoned for a short period of time.In 1966, Baker was severely beaten after a
gig in San Francisco, sustaining severe cuts on the lips and broken front teeth,
which ruined his embouchure. Accounts of the incident vary from that point on
Baker had to learn to play all over again with dentures.

Between 1966 and 1974, Baker mostly played flugelhorn and recorded music that could mostly be classified as early smooth jazz or mood music.

After developing a new embouchure Baker returned to the straight-ahead jazz that began his career, relocating to New York City and began performing and recording again, notably with guitarist Jim Hall. Later in the seventies, Baker returned to Europe where he was assisted by his friend Diane Vavra who took care of his personal needs and otherwise helped him during his recording and performance dates.

From 1978 until his death, Baker resided and played almost exclusively in Europe, returning to the USA roughly once per year for a few performance dates.

From 1978 to 1988 was Baker's most prolific era as a recording artist. However, as his extensive output is strewn across numerous, mostly small European labels, none of these recordings ever reached a wider audience, even though many of them were well-received by critics, who maintain that this was probably Baker's most mature and most rewarding phase.

THE LITTLE MAN WITH A BIG SOUND

When i was young learning to play there where many names i hear my father take about one that always mystified me was the name of "BIX" this was a unusual name i had never hear of and still haven't hear many people call that today Bix Beiderbecke here is a brief description of one of the early jazz great trumpeters.

Bix Beiderbecke was one of the great jazz musicians of the 1920's he was also a
child of the Jazz Age who drank himself to an early grave with illegal
prohibition liquor. His hard drinking and beautiful tone on the cornet made him
a legend among musicians during his life. The legend of Bix grew even larger
after he died. Bix never learned to read music very well, but he had an amazing
ear even as a child. His parents disapproved of his playing music and sent him
to a military school outside of Chicago in 1921 In 1923 Beiderbecke joined the
Wolverine Orchestra and recorded with them the following year.

Bix was influenced a great deal by the Original Dixieland Jass Band. In late 1924 Bix left the Wolverines to join Jean Goldkette's Orchestra, but his inability to read music eventually resulted in him losing the job.

In 1926 he spent some time with Frankie Trumbauer's Orchestra where he recorded
his solo piano masterpiece "In a Mist". He also recorded some of his best work
with Trumbauer and guitarist, Eddie Lang, under the name of Tram, Bix, and
Eddie. Bix was able to bone up on his sight-reading enough to re-join Jean
Goldkette's Orchestra briefly,before signing up as a soloist with Paul
Whiteman's Orchestra. Whiteman's Orchestra was one of the popular bands of the

1920's and Bix enjoyed the prestige and money of playing with such a successful band. In 1929 Bix's drinking began to catch up with him. His trumpet playing suffered and then he had a nervous breakdown while playing. Thena eventually went back to Davenport, Iowa to recover. He kept paying long after his breakdown.

Bix was never the same again. He returned to New York in 1930 and made a few
more records with a friend and under the name of Bix
Beiderbecke and his Orchestra. He move into a rooming house in Queens, New York
where he worked on his beautiful solo piano pieces "Candlelight", "Flashes", and
"In The Dark" Bix never recorded them). He died at age 28 in 1931 during an
alcoholic seizure. The official cause of death was pneumonia .

Theodore "Fats"Navarro

I often wonder where did Clifford Brown get his influence, after doing some research i discover that Fats Navarro was one of his biggest influences and if you listen to "Fats" you can hear Clifford playing thur him. Here is a brief look at Fats Navarro.

Fats Navarro was born Theodore Navarro in Key West, Florida on September 24th, 1923. his father was Cuban, African-American, and . As a child, Navarro had piano lessons, but then switched to
trumpet and tenor saxophone. While still in high school in Key West he
began to play professionally on the tenor saxophone, before switching
definitively to trumpet in 1941, A band on the road traveling north to
Cincinnati His main influences on trumpet until that time had been his
third cousin Charlie Shavers and then, more significantly, Roy
Eldridge, the harmonic link between Louis Armstrong and the beboppers of
he 1940s.In late 1943 Navarro joined Andy Kirk's band, and the presence of
Howard McGhee in the trumpet section brought a bebop influence to his
playing. His first recordings were In 1944, while the Kirk band was in
New York, Navarro sat in at Minton's (sometimes referred to as "the bebop
laboratory") In January 1945 he replaced Dizzy Gillespie, who was by
then a significant influence on him, in Billy Eckstine's band. At that
time this was the most modern and influential big band, having had
several notable members besides Gillespie, including Charlie Parker,
Dexter Gordon, and Art Blakey. In June 1946 Navarro left Eckstine,
choosing to work with Lionel Hampton in 1948) primarily in the New York
area. He acquired the nickname "Fats" because of his weight,
cherubic face, and high voice. Navarro married Rena Clark sometime
in the late 1940s and had one daughter. He died in New York City,
A few recorded solos with the Eckstine band exist, but most of
Navarro's work is in the small-band format favored by the beboppers; he
made more than 100 recordings primarily as a sideman with groups
led by Bud Powell, Charlie Parker, Tadd Dameron, Kenny Clarke, Coleman
Hawkins, and Dexter Gordon, among others. A small number of these
recordings are compositions by Navarro himself.
Navarro had a highly individual style, and was, along with
Gillespie, one of the leading bebop trumpeters of the 1940s. He had a
big, beautiful sound, quite different from Gillespie's, and
though he had a wide range (concert Fs above high C appear regularly in
his solos), he exploited the upper
register less than Gillespie. Very
long, clearly articulated phrases and a strong sense of swing
characterize his style. In these respects and in his general fluency
Navarro was a significant influence
on, most importantly, Clifford Brown, among many others. According
to Gillespie himself quoted in an
obituary by George Simon in Metronome (Oct. 1950), Navarro was
"the best all-around trumpeter of them all. He had everything a
trumpeter should have: tone, ideas, execution, and reading ability."

The Beginning

In the early days there was a trumpet player named Joe Oliver who is one of the most important figures in early Jazz. Joe had an array of improvisational styling that made him a great soloist that lead him to becoming a leader of his own band. He was the mentor and teacher of Louis Armstrong. Louis idolized him and called him Papa Joe. Oliver even gave Armstrong the first cornet that Louis was to own. Joe was famous for his using mutes, derbies, bottles and cups to alter the sound of his cornet. He was able to get a wild array of sounds out of his horn with this arsenal of home made mutes. Oliver started playing in
New Orleans around 1908 He often worked in bands around town and in 1917 he was being called the "King" . In 1919 he moved to Chicago and played in The Original Creole Orchestra He toured with the band, but when he returned to Chicago in 1922 he started the King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band . Oliver imported his protégé Louis Armstrong from New Orleans. The band first sessions around 1923 were a milestone in Jazz, introducing the playing of Louis Armstrong to the world. Unfortunately the Creole Jazz Band gradually fell apart in 1924. Oliver went on to record a pair of duets with the great pianist Jelly Roll Morton . In 1925 he became the leader of the Dave Peyton's band and moved the band to New York City in 1927. Oliver continued to record until 1931 he continued to tour the South with various groups, and settled in Georgia where he worked in a pool hall up until his death in 1938.