A tormented song

"My Funny Valentine" appeared first as one of the tunes written by Lorenz Hart and Richard Rodgers for the show "Babes in arms" in 1937. Since then it became a standard not only for musical theater (by the way, fuck musical theater, it sucks!) but also among jazz musicians. The initial chord progression has an eerie quality that's usually not exploited in the more saccharine Broadway-styled performances. This version I'm posting is from trumpetist and singer Chet Baker's last big performance, two weeks before he died when falling from the balcony of his hotel room in Amsterdam, allegedly after taking heroin and cocaine, in may 1988. He was 58 at the time, and he had struggled with his drug abuse ever since the 60's, when his career and discography started to be uneven thanks to all the legal problems caused by his drug habit.

Anyway, this last recorded performance of the song he said he "owned" is as moving as it is eerie. His quiet voice sounds deteriorated yet still in tune. The image that comes to mind is that of an old man singing at his wife's grave. In a sense it was a way for Baker to say goodbye to the song that made him famous back in the 50's with the Gerry Mulligan Quartet.


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