CHET BAKER QUARTET - Live at the Subway Club
Domino Records – 891225 (2 CD set)
Chet Baker (trumpet & vocals) Nicola Stilo (flute) Dennis Luxion (piano) Riccardo Del Fra (bass) Recorded in live performance Cologne, Germany March 22nd 1980. Bonus track featuring Enrico Pieranunzi (piano) Massimo Moriconi (bass) and John Arnold (drums) , recorded Live at the `Corto Maltese` Ostia , Italy November 1987.
This two disc set captures performances recorded for Rudolf Kreis’ Circle Label which were originally issued on three LPs and are now presented in CD format with one additional `bonus` track recorded seven months before Baker’s tragic demise. In his controversial biography `Deep in a Dream: The Long Night of Chet Baker`, James Gavin refers to this period in the trumpeter’s life as being one that saw a flood of mediocre live recordings as he crisscrossed the European club circuit, a forlorn, physically emaciated figure “listlessly playing as long as his chops held out” and purveying a repertoire he had “recorded better elsewhere”. Gavin specifically refers to these Subway club sessions as being particularly uninspired but to my ears, like so much of Baker’s late work, they are stronger than we might reasonably expect from a man so mired in drug dependency and a debauched life style. Indeed, they run the best examples of his late output, like `Chet Baker in Tokyo` a pretty close second.
The first disc opens with an extended exploration of `No Ties`, one of the Russ Freeman originals he recorded in the fifties, in which he launches into a fifteen minute solo of sustained eloquence giving lie to the notion that he was disinterestedly marking time. As with all his solos he makes an effort to say something that has coherent melodic form rather than simply running the changes and that he is able to keep this up over chorus after chorus speaks highly of his musical intellect and his physical strength. Never a showy exhibitionist, Baker sticks mainly to the middle register producing a warm, plangent sound that makes it easy to follow his lengthy, though rarely long winded, deliberations. The same is true of his companions; flautist Nicola Stilo, whose delicately woven lines of enquiry match Baker’s in terms of melodic content and pianist Dennis Luxion, currently active on the Chicago jazz scene, who contributes a cogent stream of fleet fingered bop and supportive comping. Bassist, Del Fra completes the line up and thanks to his powerful, resonant pulse the absence of a drummer goes un-noticed whilst his solo work proves equal to anything being said by the others. All contributions are captured with a clarity that is quite acceptable for a club recording of the time with no off mike drop outs or distortion.
The playlist adds one other Russ Freeman original, the optimistic `An Afternoon at Home ` into which Baker and Stilo twist some quicksilver counterpoint, a couple of songbook standards including a version of Brubeck’s `In Your Own Sweet Way` and a twenty four and a half minute take on `Just Friends` which features some of Chet’s fragile singing and a chorus or two of his idiosyncratic scatting. The Subway club programme is rounded out with two jazz standards, Horace Silver’s `Doodlin’` and Kenny Dorham’s `Down` , both staples of the Baker repertoire. To finish we have the aforementioned `bonus track` in which Baker navigates `Seven Steps To Heaven` in a spirited fashion and features another significant Italian musician, pianist Enrico Pieranunzi , whose classically inclined romanticism graced a number of Chet’s final recordings, completing what I consider a very pleasing offering in spite of what the experts have had to say about it.
Reviewed by Euan Dixon
Domino Records – 891225 (2 CD set)
Chet Baker (trumpet & vocals) Nicola Stilo (flute) Dennis Luxion (piano) Riccardo Del Fra (bass) Recorded in live performance Cologne, Germany March 22nd 1980. Bonus track featuring Enrico Pieranunzi (piano) Massimo Moriconi (bass) and John Arnold (drums) , recorded Live at the `Corto Maltese` Ostia , Italy November 1987.
This two disc set captures performances recorded for Rudolf Kreis’ Circle Label which were originally issued on three LPs and are now presented in CD format with one additional `bonus` track recorded seven months before Baker’s tragic demise. In his controversial biography `Deep in a Dream: The Long Night of Chet Baker`, James Gavin refers to this period in the trumpeter’s life as being one that saw a flood of mediocre live recordings as he crisscrossed the European club circuit, a forlorn, physically emaciated figure “listlessly playing as long as his chops held out” and purveying a repertoire he had “recorded better elsewhere”. Gavin specifically refers to these Subway club sessions as being particularly uninspired but to my ears, like so much of Baker’s late work, they are stronger than we might reasonably expect from a man so mired in drug dependency and a debauched life style. Indeed, they run the best examples of his late output, like `Chet Baker in Tokyo` a pretty close second.
The first disc opens with an extended exploration of `No Ties`, one of the Russ Freeman originals he recorded in the fifties, in which he launches into a fifteen minute solo of sustained eloquence giving lie to the notion that he was disinterestedly marking time. As with all his solos he makes an effort to say something that has coherent melodic form rather than simply running the changes and that he is able to keep this up over chorus after chorus speaks highly of his musical intellect and his physical strength. Never a showy exhibitionist, Baker sticks mainly to the middle register producing a warm, plangent sound that makes it easy to follow his lengthy, though rarely long winded, deliberations. The same is true of his companions; flautist Nicola Stilo, whose delicately woven lines of enquiry match Baker’s in terms of melodic content and pianist Dennis Luxion, currently active on the Chicago jazz scene, who contributes a cogent stream of fleet fingered bop and supportive comping. Bassist, Del Fra completes the line up and thanks to his powerful, resonant pulse the absence of a drummer goes un-noticed whilst his solo work proves equal to anything being said by the others. All contributions are captured with a clarity that is quite acceptable for a club recording of the time with no off mike drop outs or distortion.
The playlist adds one other Russ Freeman original, the optimistic `An Afternoon at Home ` into which Baker and Stilo twist some quicksilver counterpoint, a couple of songbook standards including a version of Brubeck’s `In Your Own Sweet Way` and a twenty four and a half minute take on `Just Friends` which features some of Chet’s fragile singing and a chorus or two of his idiosyncratic scatting. The Subway club programme is rounded out with two jazz standards, Horace Silver’s `Doodlin’` and Kenny Dorham’s `Down` , both staples of the Baker repertoire. To finish we have the aforementioned `bonus track` in which Baker navigates `Seven Steps To Heaven` in a spirited fashion and features another significant Italian musician, pianist Enrico Pieranunzi , whose classically inclined romanticism graced a number of Chet’s final recordings, completing what I consider a very pleasing offering in spite of what the experts have had to say about it.
Reviewed by Euan Dixon
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