Chet Baker

The chart places four planets in earth signs and one in water, with three in fire and two in air. Earth builds and holds; the element that would register the emotional weather first is nearly missing, which is a strange absence in a player whose entire reputation rested on sounding fragile. Baker played and sang with exactly that fragility, became a star at twenty three, later lost his front teeth in a beating, and died at fifty eight.

The Sun sits on the second degree of Capricorn with Saturn barely more than a degree away and Mercury further along the same sign. Capricorn is the sign of the long cost and the account that comes due, and having the planet of limits conjunct the Sun means identity and restriction were fused from the start. A trumpeter who loses his teeth loses the instrument, and had to build the embouchure again from nothing in order to keep working. A trumpeter who loses his teeth loses the instrument, and the record says he rebuilt it and carried on working.

The Moon answers from Libra, making easy contact with Jupiter at two thirds of a degree and a quintile to Venus at three quarters, so the private half of the chart is the graceful part, on good terms with scale and with beauty. That is the half audiences heard. Saturn makes easy contact with Neptune at three quarters, which is structure agreeing with what cannot be clearly seen. Three planets were retrograde.

He fell from an Amsterdam hotel window on 13 May 1988, at fifty eight. The Moon that day was balsamic and eight per cent lit, a phase that finishes things and is already looking past them. The Sun had reached Taurus, earth, the same element as his natal Capricorn, and transiting Saturn sat conjunct his natal Sun within a third of a degree while simultaneously closing a return to its own place. The planet that had been on his Sun from the beginning was back.