Deep in a Dream
The Long Night of Chet Baker
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- USD 12.99
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- USD 12.99
Publisher Description
From his emergence in the 1950s as an uncannily beautiful young Oklahoman who became the prince of "cool" jazz seemingly overnight to his violent, drug-related death in Amsterdam in 1988, Chet Baker lived a life that has become an American myth. Drawing on hundreds of interviews and previously untapped sources, this first major biography of one of the most romanticized icons in jazz gives a thrilling account of the trumpeter's dark journey. Author James Gavin delves deeply into Baker's tormented childhood, the origins of his melancholic trumpet playing, and even reveals the long-unsolved riddle of Baker's demise. Baker's otherworldly personal aura struck a note of menace and mystery that catapulted him to fame in the staid 1950s but as time wore on, his romance with drugs became highly publicized. Gavin narrates the harrowing spiral of dependency down which Baker tumbled and illustrates how those who dared to get close were dragged down with him. This is the portrait of a musician whose singular artistry and mystique has never lost the power to enchant and seduce.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The 1988 funeral of famed trumpet player and vocalist Chet Baker in L.A. was emblematic of the disorder and dysfunction of his life though he was world famous, only a small clique of loyal fans and family attended, and they were fighting with one another. Even his death in Amsterdam (possibly an overdose or drug-related murder) was an unsettled, sordid enigma. Gavin's elegantly written and thoroughly researched biography traces the astonishing highs and lows of Baker's personal and professional life. Born in 1929 in Oklahoma to a doting mother and alcoholic father, he spent 18 months in the army at age 17 before his prodigious talent blossomed when he went back to high school. Aggressively pursuing his career, he became famous for both his trumpet playing and his equally impressive hard drug habit, both of which increased over the next two decades. Gavin is superb at placing Baker in a clearly defined cultural context the "defiant new youth culture: Marlon Brando, Montgomery Clift, and James Dean, all of whom symbolized disgust with every false hope infecting America" and in explicating Baker's out-of-control actions. Gavin has an unerring eye for the salient detail as he charts the continual down-spiraling of the trumpeter's life. Drawing upon a wealth of personal interviews, music journal reviews, national media, jazz criticism and a sound sociological sense of the period, Gavin has produced a stark, troubling portrait of both the artist and his times.
