Deep In A Dream: The Long Night of Chet Baker

From his emergence in the 1950s - when an uncannily beautiful young man from Oklahoma appeared in the West Coast and became, seemingly overnight, the prince of 'cool' jazz - until his violent, drug-related death in Amsterdam in 1988, Chet Baker lived a life that has become an American myth. At once sexy and forbidding, the so-called 'James Dean of Jazz' struck a note of menace in the staid fifties.In this first major biography, the story of Baker's demise is finally revealed. So is the truth behind his tormented childhood. Behind Baker's icy façade lay something ominous, unspoken. The mystery drove both sexes crazy. But his only real romance, apart from music, was with drugs. Gavin brilliantly recreates the life of a man whose journey from golden promise to eventual destruction mirrored America's fall from post-war innocence - but whose music has never lost the power to enchant and seduce us.

e of the most romanticized icon in jazz is thrillingly recounted in this first major biography.

From his emergence in the 1950s―when an uncannily beautiful young man from Oklahoma appeared on the West Coast to become, seemingly overnight, the prince of “cool” jazz―until his violent, drug-related death in Amsterdam in 1988, Chet Baker lived a life that has become an American myth. Now, drawing on hundreds of interviews and previously untapped sources, James Gavin gives a hair-raising account of the trumpeter’s dark journey.

The story of Baker’s demise―a heretofore unsolved riddle―is revealed here at last. So is the truth behind his tormented childhood, the pain of which haunted his entire life. Gavin explores the birth of the melancholy trumpet playing, the fragile tenor voice, and the otherworldly personal aura that catapulted Baker to fame. Sexy, angelic, needy, and forbidding all at once, Baker became known as the James Dean o