Chet Baker, born in the atmosphere of a typical rural farm in the region of Oklahoma. By 1940, his family moved to California, where his father, amateur guitarist, he instilled a love for jazz through discs Jack Teagarden, a trombonist in the era of swing. His first instrument was a trombone logically, but its future was not written to slide rods, but to push pistons. In the conservatory of his city, "Glendale High Shool", learned the basics of trumpet and soon began playing in youth gangs, imitating the great white trumpeters of the era, Bix Beiderbecke, Harry James.  At 16, he enlisted in the army and when he graduated, study music theory in the "Camino College,

Los Angeles. There he came into contact with the best bebop trumpeters: Fast Navarro, Dizzy Gillespie, Red Roney, etc.. Since work was scarce, the reinstatement in the army in 1950 but a destination not comfortable in the desert of Arizona he definitely broke away from military life. Back to California and was fortunate that Charlie Parker, who was touring the area, needed a trumpeter for his group. Chet Baker, took the tails of more than fifty candidates as they hoped to turn the hearing "Tiffany's Club. After listening to him, "Bird" had enough, suspended the hearing and hired him to several concerts on her tour in California and also in Canada. So impressed was the young Charlie Parker in which the return to New York, warned Dizzy Gillespie and Miles Davis, who walked gently with the young trumpeter white. He met Gerry Mulligan in 1952 and formed an unusual quartet, the wonderful, "Gerry Mulligan Quartet" in which for the first time the piano disappeared to make way for a line of flexible and powerful winds at the same time. That sound became so popular that it was taken as a badge of jazz that was done on the West Coast of the United States, even though New York came from Mulligan and Baker had all his fans on the East Coast. When they parted Baker and Mulligan, trumpeter found his next partner, the magnificent pianist Russ Freeman, with whom he recorded discs paramount. He traveled to Europe in 1955, and takes the piano Dick Twardzik, replacing Freeman who preferred not to travel. Problems on the business of drugs and was arrested in Italy and later in Germany, accused of trafficking in heroin. Record some exceptional recordings in Paris and returns to New York where the occasion of a brutal beating, loses his teeth and the power of pocketing the trumpet well. He recovered slowly and painfully and the last stage of his career and recorded many great albums especially for European seals. His death occurred under suspicious circumstances - say someone jumped from a window, on 13 May 1988. With his death, jazz lost a great musician.