His mother, Vera Moser, worked in a perfume shop but was a former pianist.
His father, Chesney Henry Baker Senior, was a guitar player.
Baker Sr. bought him a trombone to introduce him to music, but he had already started on his own, singing in the church choir and at some singing competitions.
However, the trombone, well, was too big for him, so his father replaced it with a more fitting trumpet, more suitable for his young age.
At sixteen, he dropped out of the music school he was attending and joined the army.
After two years, he also left the army and enrolled at “El Camino College” in Los Angeles to study music theory and harmony.
It didn’t take long before he found himself back in the army, where he became part of the “Sixth Army Band.”
He didn’t stay there long either, as he was given a medical discharge after psychiatric tests deemed him unfit for military life.
His early performances in the California jazz scene were alongside Stanley Gayetsky, a saxophonist better known as Stan Getz.
Then he was taken under the wing of a certain Charles "Charlie" Christopher Parker Jr., who included him in his “Band,” and the rest is history...
He was a Capricorn like me (to be honest, he was born on December 23, just like me but, well, twenty-nine years earlier) and his name was Chesney Henry Baker Junior, just “Chet” to friends.
Chet Baker – Memories - In Tokyo Live vinyl play(full album)