Mark Murphy

Mark Murphy stood out across his era as the rare jazz vocalist committed to authentic expression. Throughout a long stretch of the 1970s and 1980s, when many peers gravitated toward lounge material, the youthful post-bop stylist remained devoted to the standards repertoire, frequently reshaping those songs in daring ways. Capitol had promoted him as a teen idol in the middle 1950s, yet he soon left that commercial sphere behind for independent recordings that let him explore a broad range of passions, among them Jack Kerouac, Brazilian music, songbook projects, vocalese, and hard bop.

Raised near Syracuse, New York, in a household where both parents sang, Murphy took up piano early and later pursued studies in voice and theater at college. He spent time touring Canada with a jazz trio and returned briefly to his hometown before relocating to New York early in 1954. Television spots led to a Decca Records deal and the 1956 release Meet Mark Murphy. One further Decca album followed before he moved to Capitol in 1959. Although the label pushed formulaic songs and a polished image on the newcomer, he carved out space for strong standards collections backed by West Coast jazz players and marked by an unmistakable approach that bent phrases and incorporated short scatting passages to affirm his jazz roots.

Four albums eventually appeared on Capitol, yet none connected with mainstream listeners as the company had hoped. His first Riverside project, the 1961 collection Rah!, blended standards with bop vocals and signaled the scope of his artistic reach. While the twentysomething Murphy appeared somewhat youthful for a saloon classic such as “Angel Eyes,” he delivered assured performances on the second side, which took its cue from a Lambert, Hendricks & Ross album and offered vocalized versions of bop material including “Milestones” and Annie Ross’ “Twisted.” Rah! and the subsequent themed set That’s How I Love the Blues featured stellar support from Clark Terry, Snooky Young, Al Cohn, Bill Evans, and Blue Mitchell. Both outings also revealed Murphy’s habit of mining twentieth-century popular and jazz catalogs for material that ranged from the overly familiar to the long neglected.

By the middle 1960s Murphy had become aware of his substantial following across Europe. Like numerous other American musicians, he lived abroad for an extended period and released no records in the United States for the remainder of the decade. Instead he worked with British imprints such as Fontana and Immediate, the latter founded by Rolling Stones manager Andrew Loog Oldham, and joined the Clarke-Boland Big Band for the 1967 album Midnight Mood. His steady club work and closely felt stage manner drew enthusiastic notices from jazz and vocal critics alike. When he came back to America in the early 1970s, Murphy had established himself as a leading figure in vocal jazz.

Armed with a Muse contract, he went on to record nearly two dozen albums for the label, encompassing gritty 1970s sessions with the Brecker Brothers, spoken-word tributes to Jack Kerouac, and the two-volume Nat King Cole Songbook series. During those years he ranked among the handful of straight-ahead jazz singers, apart from established names such as Sinatra and Tormé, who sustained a career solely through their art. He also maintained a demanding tour schedule and continued to be cited as a touchstone of cool from 1959 into 1999. Later releases included Some Time Ago in 2000, Memories of You in 2003, and Love Is What Stays in 2007. Murphy died in October 2015 at the age of 83.