Chet Baker: Deep in a Dream

By GRAHAM REID

(Herald rating: * * * )

From beautiful, photogenic young man to haggard deathmask thanks to heroin was trumpeter/singer Chet's story, dragged out over the decades until he fell to his death from an Amsterdam hotel room in '88.

Chet was fashionable twice, in his 20s when he was the epitome of moody cool, then in '89 when fashion photographer Bruce Webber's doco Let's Get Lost showed Baker as some kind of homo-erotic hipster-turned-aged-drugstore-cowboy.

Everyone should have at least one Baker album and this 19-track collection - bookended by his signature tune, his wispy treatment of My Funny Valentine - seems as good as any, although lacking in some of his most elegantly fragile material.

Baker barely extended himself in his pallid singing or mid-range trumpet playing, but his music suggested an emotionally distant, 2am jazz mood. And that never goes out of fashion.

Label: EMI