Mark Murphy: The Slow Way Up by Gene Lees

© -Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

“The singer who has most influenced Murphy, by his own reckoning, is Peggy Lee.

"She has such a creative approach through the lyrics," he said, "as opposed to Sarah Vaughan's creative approach through the music. Peggy is always creative: she never stops experimenting and trying out things. That's one reason she's never a bore. She's inconsistent but never dull.

"Next on my list of favorites, among the women, would be Lee Wiley. She's one of those rare phenomena, like Billie Holiday, who create a whole new way of singing without really trying.

"Betty Carter kills me when I see her, but she doesn't record well. There's something about her voice that they just haven't captured. I think she's just about the greatest jazz singer around.

"Among the men, I'd say. . . . Well, Johnny Hartman's voice is my favorite for a male singer. As a technician, Mel Torme is my favorite. For the feeling, Ray Charles.”

- Mark Murphy as told to Gene Lees

Mark Murphy, the daringly original Jazz vocalist, died in October 2015 after a 60-year career.

The following piece was written in 1963 when he was nearing the completion of  the first decade of his journey through the world of Jazz vocalese [“ a term for Jazz singing in which newly invented texts or lyrics are set to Jazz improvisations” - think Lambert, Hendricks and Ross].

It was a decade with some highs - LP’s with arrangements by Bill Holman, Ralph Burns and Al Cohn, and some lows “... bad rooms with incompetent musicians.”

Shortly after this piece was published, Mark moved to London where he would begin a new phase in his career that included acting and frequent tours of the European continent.

All too often these days, the press carries obituaries about mid-20th century Jazz performers, understandably as what begins in life ultimately must end in death.

But it’s nice to remember the beginnings, too, as this feature attempts to do regarding one of the singular figures in Jazz singing - Mark Murphy.

“It is one of the paradoxes of American music that while run-of-the-mill popular singing has been deteriorating, the level of craftsmanship in quality pops has been on the rise.

Though in the broader fields of popular music the sound of ignorance is a distinct asset, the singers who make the better pop and/or jazz vocal albums are more often than not thoroughly trained musicians. Some, such as Nat Cole, Mel Torme, Sarah Vaughan, Ray Charles, Carmen McRae, and Steve Lawrence, are pianists. Almost all the better singers have studied voice with qualified teachers.

One of the newest examples of this breed of singer is Mark Murphy, who couldn't be less like the ill-trained lyric-mumblers attached to the big bands in the late 1930s and early '40s. Murphy also is a pianist and a good one. Until a year or two ago, he often worked as a single, accompanying himself.

Today, however, he works only as a stand-up singer. More and more he is being recognized as a genuinely original performer, thanks in part to several appearances on the Steve Allen television show. Earlier this year, he was picked as talent deserving of wider recognition among male singers in Down Beat's International Jazz Critics Poll.

But recognition is coming only after many years of dues paying, working bad rooms with incompetent musicians.

If Murphy does not play piano publicly now, the instrument is still a key to his work. When he is planning an album, he tapes a rough draft of it, accompanying himself. The piano part indicates to the arranger (usually Al Cohn nowadays) what he wants to hear in the final arrangements.

"I have to do it that way," Murphy said. "I wouldn't be able to sing to the best of my ability if I didn't, because I wouldn't know what's happening in the charts.

"Frankly, I don't know how singers do it the other way — going into the studio to face a completely new orchestration. I have to feel comfortable in the arrangement. The first time you hear an orchestration, it's distracting.

"In order to get into a song, I have to have it in a certain setting. So I sit down at the piano and try to create an atmosphere that fits the song.”

Murphy approaches ballads differently from up-tempo tunes.

"In the fast ones," he said, "I emphasize the music more than the lyrics and try to bring out both the melodic character of the song and the chord changes.

"I try to isolate the melody and then bring in the changes, maybe scatting a chorus to further point up the changes.

"But in a ballad, I try to emphasize the lyrics. There are different ways of doing that. It's funny. You try to think of a way to do it so that people can't talk through it. I've learned that from working in night clubs. I hope some day I'll be able to say that I'll never work in another one."

When Murphy has pondered a tune, taped it, and turned it over to Cohn, the latter usually sticks closely to Murphy's introductions, endings, modulations, and tempo changes. There may be some variation from the chord changes the singer has set down.

"Each arranger I've worked with has been completely different," Murphy said. "Yet they've all given me great arrangements. Ralph Burns has been marvelous. He never minded my tugging at his shoulder on the date and asking for changes in an arrangement. Bill Holman was very kind when I recorded with him for Capitol. He's such a poet with a big band. Al Cohn is wonderful. He's so relaxed on a date — such a down stud, as they say."

MURPHY WAS BORN in Syracuse, N.Y., but grew up in nearby Fulton. When he was graduated from Syracuse University, he stayed in the area, playing piano in local groups.

"Then I went to work with an itinerant trio," he recalled. "We went to Canada to work a job in Magago, Quebec. It was a disaster. The other two musicians didn't like my playing, and the feeling was mutual. They were the worst musicians I ever worked with.

"I went back to Syracuse and took a job in a toy store. I saved a few pennies and came down to New York City and dived in."

Murphy made part of his living in those days as an actor. He worked in summer stock and appeared on television in an operatic version of Casey at the Bat. Most of his lines in that opus were spoken.

For a time he recorded for Decca, but nothing happened —though a good many singers who heard the discs became ardent champions of the Murphy cause. Later he recorded for Capitol. Here, too, nothing happened, though the trade paid a good deal of attention. Finally, he signed with Riverside, and his LPs began to get the attention of the people who count: those who buy the records.

During his early days, Murphy elicited a mixed response from critics. Though all of them recognized his extraordinary skill in working through changes, his precise sense of time, and his general musicianship, all charged him with affectations of enunciation. This criticism has faded in the last year or two, because the cause of it has largely faded from Murphy's work.

His most recent album, an all-blues collection with arrangements by Cohn, received rave reviews almost everywhere.

"It surprises me that the blues album has been accepted the way it has, both by critics and the public — and the Negro public in particular," he said. "The critics could have thrown up their hands and said I shouldn't have done the album, but they didn't, with only one exception that I can think of.

"I wasn't trying to do an album of Negro blues. It was my conception of the blues, and it has been accepted as such."

The singer who has most influenced Murphy, by his own reckoning, is Peggy Lee.

"She has such a creative approach through the lyrics," he said, "as opposed to Sarah Vaughan's creative approach through the music. Peggy is always creative: she never stops experimenting and trying out things. That's one reason she's never a bore. She's inconsistent but never dull.

"Next on my list of favorites, among the women, would be Lee Wiley. She's one of those rare phenomena, like Billie Holiday, who create a whole new way of singing without really trying.

"Betty Carter kills me when I see her, but she doesn't record well. There's something about her voice that they just haven't captured. I think she's just about the greatest jazz singer around.

"Among the men, I'd say. . . . Well, Johnny Hartman's voice is my favorite for a male singer. As a technician, Mel Torme is my favorite. For the feeling, Ray Charles.

"You know, among the older and established stars, there are some who are beginning to bore me. I don't associate greatness with just endurance. Just because you can last, that doesn't necessarily mean that your talent is as exciting as that fact would seem to indicate. I'm thinking of Ella Fitzgerald and Frank Sinatra. I've never really been a Sinatra fan, although he has made some great records."

CURRENTLY, THE CHIEF influence on Murphy's work would seem to be a trio he discovered while working at the Living Room in Cincinnati, Ohio, composed of Frank Vincent, piano; Dee Felice, drums; Lee Tucker, bass.

Of them Murphy said:

"You know what it's like to come upon a group of people who stimulate you to a point where, in a matter of weeks, you become almost a different artist? That's what happened with this group. I was able to do things I just am not able to do with others.

"It's seldom that a singer, especially in jazz, finds even one piano player who is stimulated by him and in turn stimulates him. (It's because of that age-old condescension and jealousy of instrumentalists toward singers.) Well, I found not one musician but a whole trio who worked that way with me.

"Then and there I said, 'Wherever I go, they're going with me.' "

Where is Murphy going?

"I'd like to be able to build a large enough name to make a good living," he said, "and then spend half my time singing, the other half acting. I love them both. From my standpoint, acting is much more difficult than singing."

When singing, Murphy said he'd like to do concerts. And there are about four night clubs in the United States that he said are nice to work in. He'd also like to do some television, "though I don't think the American public will take me to their bosom like a Perry Como, which I'm just not." And some motion-picture work would be attractive, for he might be able to combine some singing with acting, though ideally it would mainly entail acting.

All of this looks a good deal more possible for Murphy than it did a few years ago, when he was working poor rooms for little money.

"It hasn't been a matter of ups and downs," he said. "It's been more like a very painfully slow and steady up."

Source:

Downbeat Magazine

November 7, 1963.