Chet Baker – Baker’s Holiday

Billie Holiday's repertoire through Chet Baker

Baker's Holiday begins with a clear idea: Chet Baker devotes an album to songs associated with Billie Holiday. Recorded in New York in 1965, around six years after her death, it places him at the centre as both an instrumentalist and a singer. The album appeared on Limelight, a Mercury label also known for elaborate sleeve presentation. Its title plays on the two performers' names, but the musical connection goes beyond the wordplay. Ten songs drawn from Holiday's repertoire are brought into a new sequence around a different soloist, retaining their history while entering another set of arrangements.

The ensemble is larger than the small quartet familiar from many Baker recordings. This is a tentet: five reed players join Baker, Hank Jones on piano, Everett Barksdale on guitar, Richard Davis on bass and Connie Kay on drums. Jimmy Mundy supplied the arrangements and Luchi DeJesus produced. Baker's brass instrument here is the flugelhorn. That specific combination of soloist, reeds and rhythm section establishes the setting. The tribute develops through repertoire and arrangement, as well as through Baker's movement between singing and playing the melody on his horn across the album's ten selections.

An arranger links the two performers

The opening song, “Travelin' Light”, provides a particularly direct connection. Jimmy Mundy and Trummy Young composed its music, with lyrics by Johnny Mercer. Mundy had already arranged the piece for Billie Holiday's 1942 recording with Paul Whiteman's orchestra. More than twenty years later, it opens another programme arranged by him, this time for Baker. The link is therefore personal as well as musical. One of the people involved in creating and presenting part of Holiday's repertoire returned to the song for another performer and a different ensemble, bringing experience of its earlier life into the later recording.

“Easy Living”, “That Ole Devil Called Love”, “You're My Thrill” and “Don't Explain” continue through the repertoire. On the closing selection, Holiday herself shares the writing credit with Arthur Herzog Jr. “Crazy She Calls Me” offers a smaller but intriguing detail: the song associated with Holiday was originally titled “Crazy He Calls Me”. Baker's album changes the title even though his performance is instrumental. Such details give the programme depth without turning it into an exercise in imitation. The compositions carry their earlier associations, while the new arrangements create another route through melodies that listeners may already know from Holiday's recordings.

Singing, flugelhorn and a reed section

Baker sings selections including “Travelin' Light”, “Easy Living”, “When Your Lover Has Gone” and “There Is No Greater Love”. Instrumental performances sit alongside them. That alternation gives the record its own shape, allowing a listener to follow two approaches to a melody by the same performer. The five reed players are Leon Cohen, Henry Freeman, Wilford Holcombe, Seldon Powell and Alan Ross. Their parts belong to Mundy's arrangements around Baker's lead voice. The tentet thus provides resources beyond a rhythm trio while retaining a relatively compact number of musicians, with clearly differentiated roles inside the ensemble.

The rhythm section brings further connections. Hank Jones had accompanied Ella Fitzgerald. Connie Kay was known as the Modern Jazz Quartet's drummer and had previously worked with Lester Young. Everett Barksdale had played with Art Tatum, while Richard Davis had already contributed to significant recordings by Eric Dolphy and Andrew Hill. These different experiences meet in the same song programme. Following the accompanists offers another way to hear the album: the tribute becomes an ensemble project, with the soloist's delivery supported and shaped by decisions made throughout the group. The familiar name at the front rests on a substantial body of shared musical experience.

The Limelight Acoustic Sounds Series reissue

This edition belongs to the Verve Acoustic Sounds Series and is offered as one 180-gram LP under catalogue number ALIM 27329. Ryan K. Smith handled mastering and lacquer cutting at Sterling Sound. The publisher identifies the original analog tapes as the source, and Quality Record Pressings manufactures the record. The programme retains its ten original selections, beginning with “Travelin' Light” and ending with “Don't Explain”. It therefore preserves the sequence in which the tribute was originally assembled, including the movement between Baker's singing and his flugelhorn performances across the two album sides.

Stoughton Printing supplies the tip-on gatefold jacket, a fitting presentation for an album whose original Limelight release already gave considerable attention to its packaging. The music offers a particular view of Baker in 1965: deliberately chosen repertoire, Mundy's arrangements and an ensemble connecting several strands of jazz experience. Within a collection, Baker's Holiday occupies a useful intersection. It is a Chet Baker album, an exploration of songs associated with Billie Holiday and a tentet project whose historical links extend into the identity of its arranger. Those concrete relationships give the tribute substance beyond the cleverness of its title.

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More by Chet Baker: In New York

Musicians

Participants and documented credit status. Track references correspond to the tracklist.

Baker plays flugelhorn. Four vocal tracks are documented; vocals on B3 remain disputed. Reed instruments are not assigned more specifically without evidence. Jimmy Mundy is the arranger, not an additional instrumentalist.