Several biographical accounts date Chet Baker’s return to playing, after the 1966 assault that cost him his front teeth, to 1973 when he moved to New York. In fact, as James Gavin’s biography points out, he’d been sporadically attempting to return to playing for three years before that, at a subtle under-the-radar level, including the best-forgotten 1970 album Blood, Chet and Tears. This discovery of a tape, preserved by guitarist, record producer and arranger Jack Marshall’s family, shows that Chet had made huge progress the year before he travelled East.

He had long been friends with trumpeter, studio musician and erstwhile TV star Jack Sheldon, and it was Jack who convened this band of sympathetic musicians to accompany them playing and singing. Chet’s trumpet makes some measured, tasteful appearances, showing his embouchure was returning, but it’s as a singer he really imposes his musical personality here. The extended ending to ‘But Not For Me’ is a classic series of vocalised trumpet phrases, which Sheldon’s horn deftly accompanies. And Chet inhabits some of the lyrics with the same fragile yet doughty persona that made his 1950s quartets so popular, particularly ‘Just Friends’. Sheldon’s trumpet there, and elsewhere, is brash and confident, but thankfully never overshadows his friend and fellow front-line player.

When Sheldon sings, Chet sometimes shadows him on the horn, or takes short but lyrical solos, notably backing up Jack’s Spanish lyrics on ‘Historia de un Amor’ and both introducing and accompanying Sheldon’s singing on his composition ‘Too Blue’.

But for Chet fans, his voice and trumpet on ‘When I Fall In Love’ is a harbinger of the best that was still to come in the 16 years left to him. And for those who only know Dave Frishberg as a songwriter, singer and occasional pianist, this album shows what a perfect backing player he was, given a roomful of sympthetic colleagues.