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Jan Erik Vold & Chet Baker: Telemark Blue (Hot Club)

Ian Penman, The Wire, March 2011

SO MANY paradoxes with Chet: a man who became a visual icon, but couldn't care less about his appearance; a man whose music was all stillness and stasis, who spent the last decade of his life constantly in motion, touring, hustling. A musician whose defining tone was one of eerie disembodiment, whose life was defined by what was going on in his body. A man who appeared to do as little as possible, for whom any notions of artistic progress or personal change were anathema, but whose posthumous discography is an ever-expanding thing.

Total word count of piece: 452

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