“My Funny Valentine” by Chet Baker

"My Funny Valentine" began life as a show tune, written by Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart for their 1937 musical Babes in Arms and introduced by the teenage star Mitzi Green. It grew into a jazz standard recorded by more than 600 artists on over 1,300 albums, and for Chet Baker it became a signature song: the 1953 Gerry Mulligan quartet version with Baker aboard entered the Library of Congress's National Recording Registry in 2015.

This reading comes from Silence, released in 1989, and it keeps things spare: Baker's trumpet out front, with Charlie Haden on bass, Enrico Pieranunzi on piano and Billy Higgins on drums, four players giving the old melody all the room it needs to ache.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.