Soft Journey Chet Baker Meets Enrico Pieranunzi (1995)

"Behind his fame as jazz's doomed youth - falling from James Dean glamour to an accidental early end - it is easy to forget that Chet Baker was an intuitively brilliant trumpet improviser in a 1950s Miles Davis manner, as these tracks from Rome in 1979-80 confirm. Baker is at his late-career best here - poised in construction, seductively plummy-toned, and full of fresh ideas. Apart from My Funny Valentine (sung by Baker in his mouthful-of-dough whisper) the engaging themes are by the classy Italian pianist Enrico Pieranunzi and saxist Maurizio Giammaco - embracing smoky ballads and luxuriously-voiced but melodically ingenious hard-bop. The fast Giammaco sometimes sounds in almost unseemly haste compared to the languid Baker, but the latter is captivatingly supple on the swinging Brown Cat Dance, leaning casually against the beat, and sounding as if he has enough ideas for twice the solo." (The Guardian).