Chet Baker & Bill Evans - The Complete Legendary Sessions (2010)

Artist...............: Chet Baker & Bill Evans
Album................: The Complete Legendary Sessions
Genre................: Jazz
Source...............: Cd
Year.................: 2010
Ripper...............: Exact Audio Copy
Codec................: Flac
Information..........: TntVillage
Covers...............: Front
Total Size...........: 632 Mb


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Never have two musicians seemed so alike in temperament yet differed so much in their approach to making music as Chet

Baker and Bill Evans. While both were peerless masters of their instruments and shared a rich, evocatively lyrical playing

style that bordered beguilingly on the introspective, Baker and Evans were polar opposites when it came to the discipline

of performance.

Though both were heroin addicts, the musically-trained Evans never let it interfere with his meticulously precise flights

of invention while the self-taught Baker became increasingly erratic and inconsistent. They ventured into a recording

studio together on just three occasions, with largely disappointing results, their potentially combustible collaboration

failing to ignite and all too frequently sounding workmanlike and uninspiring.

The Complete Legendary Sessions corrals the 15 tracks that resulted from those sessions – previously issued on two 1959

albums: Chet, and Chet Baker Plays the Best of Lerner and Loewe – together for the first time, with a vocals-free Baker

concentrating on his horn playing.

Occupying the first 10 tracks (absent from the LP release, Early Morning Mood appears here as a welcome bookend) Chet

turns in satisfyingly laidback but unexciting performances. Sparks of energy are provided by Herbie Mann’s flute, the

baritone sax of Pepper Adams, Connie Kay and Philly Joe Jones on percussion, guitarist Kenny Burrell and bass man Paul

Chambers, who all go about their business with a winningly insouciant confidence.

Album opener Alone Together continues to cast a shimmering, dark-hued spell half a century later, Baker breathing long,

lingering, hypnotic lines that flex and flow with understated panache. The prevailing mood is melancholic and down-tempo,

with the virtually somnambulant Baker and overly cautious Evans remaining curiously semi-detached from each other

throughout.

The Lerner and Loewe material offers livelier fare, but Baker remains strangely subdued and understatement continues to be

Evans’s default even in the love-lit delirium of I Could Have Danced All Night. A bonus cover of Almost Like Being in Love

sways rather than swings, with Bob Corwin stepping in for Evans.

As a glimpse of what might have been had these two been on form, this tantalises and frustrates in equal measure.


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Tracklist
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01. Alone Together
02. How high the moon
03. It Never Entered My Mind
04. 'Tis Autumn
05. If You Could See Me Now
06. September Song
07. You'd Be So Nice to Come Home To
08. Time on My Hands
09. You and the Night and the Music
10. Early Morning Mood
11. Show Me
12. I Talk to the Trees
13. Thank Heaven for Little Girls
14. I Could Have Danced All Night
15. Almost Like Being in Love