Customer Reviews

With Fifty Italian Strings

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is a very under-rated album. The complaints are that the strings are too syrupy, yet one of Chet's most critically successful albums was Chet With Strings. This album is just as good as that one or Grey December, which also has strings. In fact, while all the songs are very good, it's worth buying just for Sammy Cahn's "I Should Care", Chet playing the BEST version of that song I have ever heard, with a GREAT string arrangement!! If you like Chet, even casually, you can't go wrong with this charming album.

I first heard this on LP when I was just 15 or 16. I worked at a radio station in the summers, & when they cleared out all the mono jazz LPs, I got all of them....about 200, because no one else wanted them. Later I became a jazz guitarist with many titles under my name. But one of the reasons I did so was because of this recording. I'll get a lousy rating for this review, but I say what I think. Baker plays, no singing with his child-like voice & face that women loved.As for the music itself, the strings are not intrusive.& his beautiful ballad style comes through on "You Don't Know what Love is"; "I married an Angel" & "What a Difference a Day makes." But my favorite tune on the CD is a song called "Trickleydidler" a medium tempo tune which I've never forgotten, nor will you once you've heard it.Perhaps nostalgia biased me for this CD, but I'm giving it 5 stars. I think when you hear it that you'll listen to it over & over again. It is not hard bop by any means, but definiely bebop. And as we who play that music say, "It's how a jazz artists plays the ballad that separates the men from the boys."

Don't misunderstand me: I'm a great fan of Chet Baker's playing; I even think he was miles ahead Miles (no pun intended). But this CD, as well as the Chet Baker with Strings CD, is a big mistake. The reason is that he does not solo the entire melodic line of the songs; he shares it with the strings. And we didn't pay to hear a Frank Pourcel-like rendition of the songs. Even Bobby Hackett, when he recorded with Jackie Gleason's strings, played the whole melodic lines
of the songs, and so did Parker and Clifford Brown in their with strings albums. So this is a frustrating CD. It looks like a tyro who couldn't play the whole of the song and had to rely on the strings to
help him out.

The strings are cheesy, but that wouldn't bother me so much if the mix was better. This album is an example of a bad, early stereo mix. The vocals are only in one channel and mixed too quietly, while the overbearing strings are in the other channel and mixed too loudly. Frustrating, to say the least, especially since there is some great vocal work here on tracks like Deep In A Dream and Angel Eyes. The best way to hear this album is likely to track down a mono copy of the vinyl, unfortunately.