Chet - From A Window by Keith Armstrong.

CHET - FROM A WINDOW (in memory of Chet Baker 1929 -1988) The constant onslaught of Amsterdam surged through Zeedijk on that hot night when a full moon dragged you flying to your death. In your room, in the Prins Hendrik Hotel, your clothes lay neatly folded in your suitcase, with your body a foetus on the street below. Great white hope fallen offstage, a love for heroin never shaken. Sorrow was your stuff, a plaintive, lyrical anguish, an excess of gloom and charm. This undernourished and parched body, a singing corpse, searching for an uncollapsed vein, an expert driver hating the road and the bleak hotel of his doom. Such a foolish love. Oklahoma farmboy on a golden trumpet, his teeth knocked out in San Francisco, become chained to an album a day for a thousand dollars in cash. And the Italian you learned in a Lucca jail, your spirit surviving its deportation, a lonely and melancholy master drifter whose pianissimo touched the soul. Friday 13th May 1988, Chet’s heart stopped and his horn lost its tongue. KEITH ARMSTRONG 11 January 2009 17:34