Long a jazz standard, the beautiful song "My Funny Valentine," which originally was unveiled to the world as a show tune in the 1937 Broadway musical Babes In Arms by Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart, has remained a most popular song for musicians, especially vocalists, to cover ever since-- the song has reportedly appeared on over 1300 albums to date, and still counting.

Artists who have covered the song over the years include Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, Elvis Costello, Nico, Rufus Wainwright, Sarah Vaughan, Chuck Mangione, Chaka Khan, Stan Getz, Dolly Parton, Chet Baker (who scored the first major hit with the song), Miles Davis (who in 1964 released the live album My Funny Valentine recorded at a concert at Lincoln Center, NYC), Tony Bennett, Johnny Mathis, Sammy Davis, Jr., Van Morrison (off his 1994 LP A Night In San Francisco), Carly Simon, and Etta James (Kanye West sampled her version on the song "Addiction" on his album Late Registration).

Although the song was first performed in 1937 in Babes In Arms on Broadway, where it ran for an impressive 289 performances, it wouldn't be recorded for another 8 years when the first record release of the song by Hal McIntyre with vocals by Ruth Gaylor briefly charted in 1945.

Twenty years ago today, May 13th, 1988, legendary west coast jazz trumpet player, silky vocalist (has anyone ever sung "My Funny Valentine" better?), and once gorgeous bad boy, Chet Baker, fell to his death in Amsterdam from his hotel room window. Of course, there has been a wide variety of conspiracy theories and speculation regarding the odd nature of his death. Because Baker’s life was so full of mysterious and scandalous details, a life full of intrigue and questions, why shouldn’t his death have a similar story line? I guess there is a possibility of some vendetta at play here-- at least once before in the mid 1960’s he had his teeth knocked out over a drug deal gone awry, why couldn’t another drug dealer, years later, just shove the poor son of a bitch out a window? Well, there were no signs of a struggle in his hotel room and the door was locked from the inside. Then could it have been suicide? Doubtful-- there wasn’t a note, and any person determined to kill themselves probably would have rented a room higher than two stories above the sidewalk. Sadly, Chet's death was an odd, common place accident; it’s just one of those way people accidentally meet their maker. Chet Baker simply fell out of a window. There was heroin in his system, and a considerable amount of cocaine and heroin in his room. He probably went to open the window, and simply leaned a little too far west, and lost his balance. Anyway, it’s been two decades since his death. Right now I have Chet Baker Sings on the turntable; I’m sipping some good Catholic Irish whiskey, hanging out in my new abode. Everything is perfectly copasetic. Thanks.