The Paris session by Chet Baker for Hot Club Records was brought about by the confluence of two separate things: the idea of Norwegian poet Jan Erik Vold to make a poetry and jazz album with Chet; and the ambition of label producer Jon Larsen to launch a new band for Baker. For some time (as evidenced from the earlier Signature disc, just out on Red Records), Baker had established a working partnership with guitarist Philip Catherine, but Larsen’s recording group united them with pianist Egil Kapstad and bassist Treje Venaas. Newly released with all the music recorded in Paris (but none of the spoken or sung poetic material) the Late Night Jazz album is testament to the remarkable synergy between trumpeter, guitarist and pianist.

The idea was to launch both the band and the album at the Molde jazz festival that July, but Chet’s tragic death in May put an end to those plans. As its title suggests, this is reflective, ballad-orientated fare, but interwoven with the standards are three Kapstad originals, of which the slightly more up-tempo ‘Bird from Kapingamarangi’ stands out, the teamwork between guitar and piano creating a fine setting for Chet’s quick assimilation of the quirky theme

The remainder of the Paris repertoire – Norwegian folksong ‘Blåmann, Blåmann’ aside – is the kind of fare he was playing during his residency that week at the French capital’s New Morning club with a slightly different line-up, and ‘If You Could See Me Now’, ‘How High The Moon’, and ‘Love for Sale’ are typical played examples. Clearly Chet loved Kapstad’s playing and their duos here (a pensive version of ‘Skylark’ where they occasionally extend the melody and chords almost telepathically before returning to the form, a well as a beautifully-paced and introspective ‘My Foolish Heart’) hint at the great partnership that might have been had the band continued to play regularly together

One huge benefit of the Paris studio session is that most of the tracks are relatively short, so what has to be said musically is said well, and to the point. The Signature album by contrast (it’s a live festival recording) is more typical of the large quantity of late Baker material that goes on a bit. Its version of ‘My Foolish Heart’ not only has a pretty ghastly vocal, but the trumpet solo only contains flashes of Chet’s best lyrical brilliance.

There’s a fine section of his fluent up-tempo playing on another of his staples ‘But Not For Me,’ though the introductory vocal has none of the precision or fire of his trumpet work.

Whereas all the Paris tracks are tight and well-formed, there’s a sense of the trio playing to make up the time of their set in Italy, and Catherine’s long and rather random guitar solo in the closing 12-minute ‘Love for Sale’ shows that this did not just affect the trumpeter!