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Baker was born Chesney Baker in the farming town of Yale, Oklahoma, but his family moved to Oklahoma City when he was still an infant. When he was ten the family relocated to Glendale, California, as his father chased work; Baker began studying trumpet at junior high, but his acute ear and natural talent made him lazy in his lessons and he remained an ear player for years. At 16 he joined the army, serving in Berlin where he came across live jazz for the first time, and on his return to civilian life in 1948, he spent time checking out LA trumpeters. He re-enlisted in 1950 specifically to intensify his musical training, finding the Presidio Army Band in San Francisco ideal for this purpose. A transfer to Arizona in 1951 quickly cooled Bakers ardor for army life and he faked sufficiently to arrange for a psychiatric discharge. Within months he was jamming around LA and by late spring 1952 he had auditioned for and been accepted by Charlie Parker for a West Coast tour which went up into Canada. Bird spread the word about Baker on his return to New York. Baker was spreading his own waves after he joined the new pianoless Gerry Mulligan Quartet in summer 1952. Their first records together, made in the 11 months to May 1953, remain some of he most influential of he period and of the decade, pioneering a melodic polyphony new to postwar jazz. Baker, with his melodic gifts, his extreme good looks, and his easy on-stage personality, soon became a major star in his own right. Mulligan was pulled up on drugs charges in late 1953; in his absence Baker won both the Downbeat Critics’ and Readers’ polls on trumpet. The group never reconvened, and Baker went out as a leader. He’d also picked up a drub habit, and after a successful European sojourn in 1955-57, he went through rehab and jail sentences in the US before, in 9159, bolting once again for Europe. By this time Baker had made a distinct impact on records as a limited but effective singer as well. Drug addiction continued to catch up with him, however, and he spent 1960-61 in an Italian jail before returning in 1964 to the US and making a string of records exhibiting a stronger, more dynamic approach and greater instrumental control than of yore. A severe drug-related beating in 1968 left Baker with several of his front teeth missing, and in the early 1970s he reached an all-time low giving up music for a time before a triumphant 1974 comeback at Carnegie Hall, sharing the stage with Gary Mulligan and Stan Getz. After that he spent much of his time in Europe, making literally hundreds of recordings, many of them live, some of them as good as anything from the 1950s. Baker died in curious circumstances, falling from an Amsterdam hotel window in 1988. --