Biography
Jeroen de Valk
My first name - Jeroen - is pronounced as 'ye-roon', 'oo' as in 'moon'. It’s Dutch for Jerome. I was born in Rotterdam, The Netherlands, 1958. On my first birthday, my dad moved to Amsterdam because of his work, and I decided to follow him. For a couple of years, I studied English language and literature at the University of Amsterdam and then double bass at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague with John Clayton, until various causes (having become a father, for one thing) forced me to leave school.
I am active in journalism since 1979; from 1979 until 2000 I wrote mainly about jazz in the newspaper Het Parool, then I moved on to the Utrechts Nieuwsblad/Amersfoortse Courant (two papers in the heart of The Netherlands), covering music, literature and other subjects. As a freelance bass player, I performed with small mainstream groups until the late 90s.
In 1989 and 1992 respectively, I published the first biographies of Chet Baker and Ben Webster at Uitgeverij Van Gennep, Amsterdam. The book about Chet was published in German (Oreos Verlag), English (Berkeley Hills Books) and Japanese (Gendai Tosho). In 2001, Berkeley Hills Books published Webster’s biography as well.
As Berkeley Hills Books does no longer exist, the English rights of my work are available again.
In October 2007, I published (in Dutch) an expanded and updated edition of my Chet-bio. It includes all the relevant information that has reached me since the first edition was published, as well as new interviews with dozens of individuals who knew the great trumpeter.
I’m currently living in Amersfoort (near Utrecht) with my family. In my spare time, I’m endlessly expanding my collection of Chet’s recordings. Other hobbies are: admiring the mediaevel center of Amersfoort, watching Woody Allen movies, writing poetry – without professional pretensions – and making a little music with a Westone bass guitar and a Polytone amp, both over 25 years old. I hate glib music, incomprehensible manuals and most of all: opinions about Chet and jazz in general, based on the wrong sources.
My favorite bass players are Oscar Pettiford (for his solos), Charlie Haden (for his soulfulness), Paul Chambers (for his beat) and Ray Brown (for lines, beat, sound and solos).
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