Chet Baker - Chet Baker Sings It Could Happen To You [Red]

Chet Baker Sings: It Could Happen to You puts his hushed, boyish voice front and centre, and this limited 180-gram red vinyl Spanish import adds bonus tracks to the 1958 Riverside album.

Baker had become a star on the West Coast earlier in the decade, as admired for his singing as for his playing. By 1958 he was recording in New York for Riverside, with producer Bill Grauer at Reeves Sound Studios. Pianist Kenny Drew leads a rhythm section that rotates between bassists George Morrow and Sam Jones and drummers Philly Joe Jones and Dannie Richmond, giving the record a crisp, swinging lift.

The repertoire is pure Great American Songbook. The title track, a Jimmy Van Heusen and Johnny Burke tune, is light and conversational, and My Heart Stood Still shows how naturally his phrasing suited Rodgers and Hart's wit. Everything Happens to Me slows into rueful tenderness, while Old Devil Moon closes the original album with a playful, easy lilt.

Baker never oversells a lyric. He sings close to the microphone, almost confidentially, and lets the melody do the work, a style that still sounds startlingly modern.

With extra material added to the original programme, this pressing makes a lovely introduction to the softer, more intimate side of one of jazz's great romantic figures.