The late jazz legend offers his memories of the jazz scene of the 1950s and his decline from drug use in the early 1960s

As Though I Had Wings: The Lost Memoir

Biographies & Memoirs

Baker, Chet

Arts & Literature

St Martins Pr

The beloved yet infamous Chet Baker—trumpeter, crooner, junkie, and doomed James Dean-like icon of 1950s jazz—has always projected an air of mystery (and even more so, perhaps, in the years since his death in the late 1980s). In these recently uncovered diary-entries, the mystery fades as we find that Baker's pure trumpeting, aching vocals, and now-classic renditions of many jazz standards all belie the turmoil of a wretched private life governed by addiction and abandon. Baker dominated the jazz scene of the 1950s, working closely with the likes of Gerry Mulligan, Art Pepper, and Stan Kenton. By the Sixties, however, he found himself caught in an incessantly downward spiral of heroin, cocaine, and prescription drugs. In and out of jail, in and out of relationships, criss-crossing the Atlantic, looking for gigs in the States and in Europe, searching of some sort of redemption—such is the life we encounter firsthand in these pages. This memoir is must-reading for all students of jazz history and modern American pop culture.

Chet Baker: As Though I Had Wings

St. Martin's: Griffin

Orion mass market paperback

BLOODLINE RUN

Literature & Fiction

Baker, Chet H

Genre Fiction

Horsetooth Press

Natalie's Way: A Natalie Grace Thriller

Mystery, Thriller & Suspense

Thrillers & Suspense

Chet Baker in Europe: 1975-1988/Book and Cd

Nieswand Verlag

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Books by Baker, Chet