Jazz Trumpeter Baker

Musicians stage a 'Funny Valentine' to jazz great Chet Baker at Nick's

Legendary music interpreter. Trumpeter extraordinaire. The James Dean of Jazz. Pop icon. Tragic hero. Walking train-wreck. One-of-a-kind.

Chet Baker was all these things and so much more.

And tomorrow through Saturday, Nick’s Bar and Restaurant at 124 Millbury St., Worcester, is going to celebrate the man, the mayhem and his music.

“You can’t really listen to Baker without being aware of his look. He was one of the first real media superstars, that pop celebrity, sort of the Britney Spears-Michael Jackson thing,” Frank Racette, the show’s music director, explained. “The other thing about Baker, along with his looks, you just can’t imagine his career without being aware of his spectacular addiction that afflicted him … It’s staggering. Baker makes Billie Holiday look like a Girl Scout.”

This is the fourth time Racette has served as Nick’s musical director. Following the success of the “Johnny Mercer Centennial Celebration,” “All Through the Night: A Tribute to Cole Porter” and “The Sinatra Songbook,” Racette is the unsung hero of these ambitious, awe-inspiring musical showcases.

“It’s almost four years at Nick’s down there, and a Chet Baker show is one of the first things we planned. And it just happened that we got distracted with Johnny Mercer and Cole Porter and Frank Sinatra along the way,” Racette said. “Scheduling seven musicians is like one of the Sudoku puzzles and I don’t mean the easy ones my mother did.”

Racette, who said he was lucky for having a mother that exposed him to loads of great big band and swing music, grew up in an era in which red brick grammar schools (like the one he attended in Putnam) had a piano in every classroom and most of the teachers could play.

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