American singer and musician Chet Baker was BOTD in 1929. Born in Yale, Oklahoma and raised in California, he began playing trumpet in his school band, joining the US Army during World War Two where he played in Army bands. After the war, he became of fixture of San Francisco’s jazz scene, often playing with star trumpeter Charlie Parker. He rose to fame in Gerry Mulligan’s jazz quartet, creating a sensation with his haunting delivery of the song My Funny Valentine from Richard Rodgers & Lorenz Hart‘s musical Babes in Arms. Baker’s haunting tenor, hovering between masculine and feminine registers, was hailed as a major new force in jazz, winning him a number of gay fans, for whom he became a surrogate torch song singer. Much of his career was blighted by drug addiction, though public knowledge of his drug use added to his cult appeal, lending a fascinating subtext to his 1954 recording of Let’s Get Lost. He performed largely in Europe during the 1960s, where he received multiple prison sentences for drug abuse and was confined in a sanatorium. He made a gradual comeback in the 1970s, his movie star good looks ravaged by heroin use, relearning how to play the trumpet after losing several of his teeth in an assault. He recorded extensively in the late 1970s, bringing his work to a wider international audience. Married three times and with numerous children, he admitted to having homosexual affairs while in prison. Baker died in 1988 after falling from a hotel window in Amsterdam, aged 58. One of the most revered jazz musicians of the 20th century, his legacy was sustained by Bruce Weber’s 1988 documentary Let’s Get Lost and the publication of his unfinished memoirs As Though I Had Wings in 1997. He has been portrayed several times in film, most notably by Ethan Hawke in the 2015 biopic Born to be Blue.