Chet Baker Documents and Tour Memorabilia. Chet Baker spent most of the last decade of his life in Europe performing and recording. It was a life lived on the road, spent mainly in train stations, cars, clubs, and hotels. His drug addiction was no secret, and because of it he seemed to forever be playing another gig, or playing on another recording -- somewhere -- in order to earn the money to feed his habit.
Here we have some of the artifacts of that life from the collection of Diane Vavra, his companion at the time. There is a hotel receipt imprinted with Chet's name from the Holiday Inn in Amsterdam, for a one-night stay dated October 1987, less than eight months before his death in that same city. Also from Amsterdam is a keyring with a hotel room key and minibar key from an unidentified hotel. A detailed three-page royalty statement from the Swedish record label Sonet Gramofon shows the moneys earned by Chet (reported in Swedish kronor) for sales in Europe during the period January-June 1987 for his 1985 album Candy. Accompanying these documents are four original photographs of Chet in performance in the 1980s, with various notations on the reverses noting what appear to be possible gigs, musicians, pay rates, and equipment rental companies. From the Diane Vavra Collection.