The complementary talents of Chet Baker (1929-1988) as both a trumpeter and a singer are well known today. Both Chet's trumpet and his voice seem to be extensions of the same musical personality, and once you familiarize yourself with both facets of Baker, expect to hear them both.

However, this album was a revelation at the time, bringing Baker new fame and a new audience less familiar with jazz than with pop music. The reasons are obvious: Chet's voice is delicate and beautiful, while his phrasing always swings and surprises. While Chet Baker Sings is now considered a classic and continues to be a jazz bestseller, its initial critical reception was not too good, and many renowned jazz critics disapproved of Chet's vocals as rough, unprofessional and not masculine. Despite these opinions, the album never stopped selling, and its popularity was such that after its initial release in 1954 as a 10-inch LP (Pacific Jazz LP11), which contained only eight tracks, it resurfaced in 1956 as a 12-inch LP (World Pacific PJ-1222).

Both of these original LPs were recorded in mono, but Chet Baker Sings had not lost its popularity by 1962 when the new craze of stereo recordings took hold. So Pacific Jazz decided to reissue the LP in stereo form. To accomplish this, they recorded a complementary guitar accompaniment by Joe Pass and mixed it with the original mono tapes. The result, which can be heard here, was a new album that did not respect the track listing order of its mono predecessors. While the 10-inch version contained eight tracks and the 12-inch version 14, the new stereo edition contained 12 tunes (three songs were removed from the 12-inch album and a version of "Someone to Watch Over Me" from another recording was added).
Arnold Heus (2022)