When Chet Baker , still then known by the parental form Chesney , was growing up in Oklahoma , he might well have seen a former US Army bugler , said to have been one of “ Les Terribles ” that frightened the Germans into suing for peace , who wandered from town to town across the state , drinking too much , falling foul of the law before being moved on , a little touched in the head , some thought , because of what had happened across the Atlantic , but always announcing his presence with blasts on a dented army bugle . Don Cherry , another trumpeter who grew up in the Sooner State , thought he could remember the same man , or a similar one . If so , it was a very early memory , because the Cherry family , like the Bakers , left for California when he was four . Who knows , though ? The memory , or even the oral legend of the crazy bugler , may have influenced his attraction to the cheap little Pakistani pocket trumpet that became his trademark instrument .
Like so many musicians before him and since , Chet Baker developed his chops in an Army band . Perhaps because so many African- American musicians altered their ages to discount the time spent in uniform , as if military service was an event apart from life rather than an event in it , but also because of a wider anti-military bias in liberal society , we tend now to overlook the importance , indeed the centrality of military music in the evolution of jazz and of individual jazz careers . In fact , take away the influence of army and church and the history of popular music is drastically thinned . In Chet ’ s case , the army proved to be a lifeline . An indifferent student , already cross-grained and rebellious , Chet left school at 16 and enlisted as a private soldier . Like the doughboys of 1917 , he was sent to Europe as part of the occupying force placed there to de-Nazify Germany and to stem the westward tide of Communism . Perhaps predictably , and like many of his comrades , he never showed much understanding of or interest in why a boy from the
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