YALE, Okla. (AP) - Famed jazz vocalist and trumpeter Chet Baker was born not far from Stillwater, in Yale.
He lived a hard life, one beset with drugs and music, and died much too young, at age 57.
Now the people in the small town where his life began in 1929 are trying to reclaim his musical heritage and make him a legend.
Baker spent the first 10 years of his life in Yale, before his family relocated to California.
At 16, he left home and enlisted in the U.S. Army, where he joined the Sixth Army Band at the Presidio in San Francisco.
In 1951, he left the Army and began chasing a career in music that would take him around the world.
“Yale is rising to the occasion of him,” Bruce Guthrie said recently, during the 4th annual Chet Baker Jazz Fest inside Mugsby’s Grubhouse in Yale. “He was known as a big deal in Oklahoma and throughout the nation.”
Guthrie knows.
He has spent time as manager of the Chet Baker Foundation and sings the “West Coast cool” style of jazz that Baker epitomized.
Baker was a talented but troubled man who lived a complicated life.
He began using heroin in 1957, Guthrie told the Stillwater News Press .
Author Jeroen de Valk and pianist Russ Freeman say that Baker sometimes pawned his instruments to buy drugs.
In 1966, he was beaten in Sausalitk, Italy while attempting to buy drugs and lost his front teeth, making it difficult for him to play the trumpet.
He would spend three years teaching himself how to play with false teeth.
He couldn’t stay away from the music.
Baker was born into a musical family and began by singing in a church choir. His mother Vera Moser said he learned how to memorize tunes on the radio before he was given an instrument.
His father, Chesney Baker Sr. gave him a trombone, which was later replaced by a trumpet.
And what a trumpeter he was.
In 1952, he joined the Gerry Mulligan Quartet and also became known for his haunting vocals.
In 1953, a reader’s poll in Down Beat magazine named him the best vocalist in the world.
Two years later, he was chosen the best jazz vocalist alive.
Baker’s life ended under mysterious circumstances in 1988 when he fell from a hotel balcony in Amsterdam.
“The circumstances of his death are highly unusual,” Guthrie said. “There are varying reasons.”
But the festival was a day for celebrating Chet Baker’s gifts and jazz music in general.
The event had to be relocated indoors at the last minute due to rain and the organizers thanked owner Darrell Mueggenborg for allowing them to use his space.
The event inside Mugsby’s drew a crowd of about 90 people, fewer than organizers had hoped for.
“We’ve usually drawn about 200 a night,” said Cindy White, one of the organizers of the event. “This is a great event. It has some of the best talent you can find for jazz.”
Guthrie joined Mike Moore and Scott McQuade onstage for a set of “West Coast cool.”
The Chet Baker Jazz Fest is a celebration of Baker’s music but listeners heard a variety of jazz styles including McQuade, Mike Cameron and Jarrod Johnson singing bebop, improvisational and original jazz music.
Also on hand were Oklahoma Jazz Hall of Fame regulars the Eichers: Shelby, son Nathan and wife Janet Rutland, singing gypsy jazz.
Organizers hope the festival will grow and begin to attract more attention.
They have plans to raise Baker’s profile and increase awareness of his connection to their city by building the Chet Baker Jazz Center with a museum or a studio containing memorabilia in Yale.
“We need to do something like that,” White said. “We need to make Chet more of a big name.”
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Information from: Stillwater News Press, http://www.stwnewspress.com
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