Rob Madna: The Wizard of Dutch Jazz

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

“Rob was also a teacher of mathematics and maybe that had also something to do with the fact that he became a wizard in harmony. He was a very straight ahead and honest person and he only wanted to play the music he liked. That was one of the reasons he gave up his job as a professional musician and became a teacher in mathematics. That way he had a steady income in order to give his family financial support and he could still play the music he loved on a very high level. Later on he got an offer for a teaching position at the conservatory in Amsterdam, which he accepted and he became a great inspiration for young upcoming pianists.’

- Eric Ineke, drummer, bandleader and educator

Thanks to the efforts Jazz buddies and Jazz musicians based in The Netherlands, I’ve have been able to piece together a modicum of awareness of the Dutch Jazz scene.

Each in their own way has been a regular source of information, education and awareness about “Jazz Behind the Dikes.” [the phrase comes from the title of one of the earliest compilations of the music of Dutch Jazz groups which was released on Philips Records in 1955.]

For a country with a population of 16.8 million people - about the same number of people are in Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside and San Diego counties; four of the five counties that make up the greater part of southern California - the Dutch have produced quite a respectable number of distinguished Jazz musicians, many of whom have been previously featured on these pages.

Because of my “inside connections,” I have been made especially privy to knowledge about many of the talented composer-arrangers who write charts for big bands, but who don’t lead their own orchestras.

Occasionally, individual or retrospectives performances of the work of these less well-known big band arrangers is the focus of concerts by publicly and/or privately supported resident Dutch orchestras such at The Metropole Orchestra [which includes a string section], The Metropole Big Band [sans strings], the Jazz Orchestra of the Concertgebouw, the Rotterdam Jazz Orchestra, and the Dutch Jazz Orchestra.

The Metropole, although based in Hilversum about 35 kilometers SE of Amsterdam frequently gives concerts at the Bimhuis, the musicians union concert hall based in Amsterdam, the country’s capital city. The Concertgebouw’s Jazz Orchestra is resident in that great concert hall which is located in Den Hague while the Rotterdam Jazz Orchestra is resident in the North Sea port city that bears its name. Rotterdam also hosts the annual North Sea Jazz Festival at which the Dutch jazz Orchestra has made frequent appearance.

One of these appearance by the DJO at the NSJF has particular meaning for me because it was at that festival in 2008 that the big band paid tribute to the music of Rob Madna who was the DJO’s musical director for a short time when it was first organized in 1983.

The title of this piece derives from the fact that Rob was a very analytical individual who solved problems of technique and perception in a very deliberate manner. He taught himself to play piano, how to arrange music for a big band and established himself as both a professor of music at a conservatory level and as a university professor in mathematics. “Wizard,” perhaps is an understatement. Mathematics has been described as “the bridge to infinity” and is no doubt a suitable training ground for the infinite variation that is Jazz improvisation. It was Rob’s genius to be able to function and create in both universes, thus bridging the worlds of Mathematics with the world of Jazz.

I first became familiar with Rob when I heard him as a pianist in a trio with Dick Bezemer on bass and Wessel Ilcken on drums. Later in his career, Rob could often be heard in the company of Marius Beets on bass and Eric Ineke on drums as a trio or as a rhythm section for Ferdinand Povel, an excellent tenor saxophonist.

That rhythm section was joined by Ferdinand Povel, the dynamic Dutch soprano and tenor saxophonist, for a club date at Cafe Nick Vollebregt, Laren, The Netherlands and the July 4, 1976 performances by the group were recorded by Ruud Kleyn of Dutch NPS Radio and subsequently issued on CD in 2003 as Broadcast Business ‘76: The Rob Madna Trio featuring Ferdinand Povel [Daybreak DB CHR 75162].

Harm Mobach provided these descriptive insert notes which will give you some background information about Rob Madna’s career in music and a brief discography of his recordings.

Rob Madna (1931-2003)

“Rob Madna, one of the founders of modern jazz in postwar Holland, died on April 5th, 2003. He'd been active for many years as a pianist, trumpet player, composer, arranger, bandleader and teacher. His death came as something of a shock, in and out of Holland; only the month before, Madna had been conducting workshops for members of German bandleader Peter Herbolzheimer's Orchestra. Foreign and domestic students at the Amsterdam Conservatory counted on him to tweak their emerging concepts. And he still had plenty of ideas and plans he never got to execute.

Rob Madna was born in The Hague on June 8, 1931, the son of an Indonesian father and Dutch mother. His interest in music was kindled during World War II. As he'd tell it later, his parents had two records that fascinated him, one by Mildred Bailey with Teddy Wilson and a recording of "My Man's Gone Now" from Porgy and Bess. He taught himself to play piano by ear, and after the war, while still in high school, he quickly ripened into a respected modern pianist, initially inspired (like many Dutch colleagues at the time) by West Coast jazz musicians.

In 1950 he started playing professionally in the Amsterdam jazz club Sheherazade, with a small group led by the American drummer Wally Bishop; by the following year he was a member of the Rob Pronk Boptet. In 1953, he was reunited with Bishop for a club gig in Dusseldorf, where by chance Lionel Hampton's band was also playing. Hamp's trumpeter Art Farmer came down to check them out and wound up sitting in for five hours. (Madna met Hampton trumpeter Quincy Jones then too.)

After an engagement in Sweden in 1954, he entered military service—"the greatest disappointment in my life" he called it later. But he was granted leave to participate in the first studio recording of Dutch modernists, anthologies issued as Jazz from Holland and Jazz Behind the Dikes. Subsequently he backed American stars like Phil Woods, Dexter Gordon, Don Byas and Lucky Thompson, played in a Freddie Hubbard quartet, and has worked with valve trombonist and arranger Bob Brookmeyer and trumpeter-bandleader Thad Jones. (More on Jones in a minute.)

During the 1970s, Madna had started and written for a rehearsal band which more or less spun off from Frans Elsen's so-called Hobby Orchestra. Madna also arranged and composed for Jerry van Rooijen's Dutch Jazz Orchestra, in which he played piano and trumpet. This connection ultimately led to the recording of the 1996 double-CD Update, Music from Rob Madna. (He'd picked up trumpet only at age forty, but ultimately preferred flugelhorn.) Madna had also investigated the potential of synthesizers; there's a live recording of the Rob Madna Fusion Group, from 2001, which has yet to be issued.

Inspirations

When Madna mentioned his influences in interviews, he seldom brought up pianists first. He's always valued Bud Powell, Horace Silver and Herbie Hancock but his greatest model was a horn player: Miles Davis. Madna had been transfixed by his 1949-50 Birth of the Cool recordings, before he caught Miles (with John Coltrane) in 1956. Hearing them play "Stablemates" and "How Am I To Know" really hooked him. Madna once said, "Miles Davis has been enormously important to me. His playing was as natural as speech — you could hear the human voice coming through. (Miles once said: 'I'd like to play the way Orson Welles speaks'.) And he also had that tremendous feeling for 'time.' To me he's the great role model."

And then there's Thad Jones. Back when Rob Madna's 'big-band period' started, his friend and mentor Jerry van Rooijen had pressed him to start writing orchestral arrangements. When Madna protested he didn't have the training, Van Rooijen said, "Use your imagination; you've heard enough." When he hunkered down to it, Madna took particular inspiration from Jones, then co-leading his own fine big band with drummer Mel Lewis. (It had also started as a rehearsal band.) Madna had met Jones in Hilversum, Holland, when the trumpeter was recording with the Metropole Orchestra. Later when Jones heard Madna with the radio band the Skymasters, he invited him to join his orchestra for a European tour — an invitation Madna alas had to reject, as he was busy with his other career as a mathematics master at the time.

With typical modesty, Madna disparaged his writing as too much like Jones's. He went too far, but there are similarities: his writing is traditional and modern at the same time, rhythmically dynamic, with simple melodies beautifully harmonized. From Jones he also learned to respect other musicians. In 2000 he said, "When we in Europe judged someone's playing, we'd say it was 'OK, but...'. When Jones talked about members of his band, like trumpeter Snooky Young, he emphasized only the good things.'

Conservatory Teacher

Rob Madna also made his mark as an educator. Even into his 70s, he continued to mentor and teach piano students in the Jazz Department of the Amsterdam Conservatory. Colleagues and students esteemed him for his skill and musicality, his conviction and empathy, and the joy he brought to teaching. The thoughtful quality that characterized his playing revealed itself in the criticism he offered, always based on broad experience.

Broadcast Business '76

The CD Broadcast Business '76 is no memorial album, having been in the works for some time, and the quality of this 1976 live recording of Madna's trio with guest Ferdinand Povel speaks for itself. For one thing, the opener is a seldom-heard Thad Jones tune, "Quietude," recorded by Thad and Mel in 1969. The album also features a rare appearance by Povel on soprano sax, and '70s Madna staple, Billy Strayhorn's "U.M.M.G. (Upper Manhattan Medical Group)."

Everyone's in excellent form. Madna's playing has his characteristic harmonic richness, and he audibly inspires the swinging bassist Koos Serierse and drummer Eric Ineke. And Ferdinand Povel's playing flows here in a way I've never heard elsewhere. On Coltrane's "Like Sonny" and "Satellite," he rips through the harmonies sometimes, maintaining tightrope control. Another player Povel admires, Joe Henderson, wrote the ballad "I Know You Care," inspiring a particularly emotive tenor solo.

Comparing this live recording from a cafe in Laren with the 2000 Madna CD 'en blanc et noir' #6 (Daybreak DRCHR75095) may lead you to conclude that Broadcast Business '76 is in fact Povel's date. There are two of his tunes, "In An Aquarian Mood" (for the astrologically-minded, he was born on February 13), and "Pori." (Povel had appeared at Finland's Pori festival in 1974). The level of interplay between Rob Madna and Ferdinand Povel was always very high, and this impressive CD is a key part of Rob Madna's musical legacy.”

Nueva Manteca at 25

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

“Inspired by the work of the great Ahmad Jamal we generally approach songs more as a 'compositional device' which allows for interpretations whereby the song becomes a 'story' comprising edited musical scenes in the form of heads, intros, interludes, vamps, solo choruses, outros. Much like film editing. That way each musical scene contributes to the progress of the story of the song. Arranging becomes composing. We feel that with this approach we have created our own niche in the Latin world.”

“One of the appealing and distinctive aspects of Nueva Manteca's albums has been the way we tried to "shed new light' on the above-mentioned material, translating it into Latin Jazz, synthesizing the Afro Caribbean traditions with Jazz and European Classical music.”

- JAN LAURENS HARTONG, creator, Nueva Manteca

The music of the Latin Jazz band Nueva Manteca has intrigued me for many years, not least because they are so reminiscent of the Cuban Latin Jazz group Irakere, whose music created a lasting impression on me after I first heard it on their Columbia Records Newport Jazz Festival LP.

[Some of you may recall that Irakere was the band that first brought alto saxophonist Paquito D’Rivera and trumpeter Arturo Sandoval to the attention of Jazz audiences both in the USA and abroad.]

Chucho Valdes, a monster keyboard player, was the leader of Irakere and he created much of that band’s “personality” by the attention he paid to infusing his arrangements with elements of other styles of music while staying true to the forms of rhythm that were native to the Afro-Cuban tradition.

Dutch Pianist Jan Laurens Hartong assumed a role similar to that of Chucho’s when he established the Latin Jazz ensemble Nueva Manteca 25 years ago and gave its music a similar distinctiveness adding elements of Bebop and Modern Jazz phrasings to Latin Jazz themes, motifs and rhythms through the many intriguing arrangements he wrote for the band.

In celebration of its 25th anniversary Nueva Manteca recently issued Nueva Manteca Live! 25 Years, a self-produced double CD available through Jazz World Music and Agency. You can locate more information about this CD, the group and all of its recordings via this link or via www.nuevamanteca.nl.

Each CD is comprised of a live performance: [1] the first features a January 6, 1994 date that was recorded at Nick Vollebrecht’s Jazzcafe in Laren, The Netherlands and [2] and the second offers a January 5, 2013 recording from a concert at The Bimhuis in Amsterdam.

In 1994 the line-up consisted of two trumpets, tenor saxophone, piano, bass and four percussionists led by the marvelous drummer Lucas van Merwijk and the tumbadora Nils Fischer while in 2013 Lucas and Nils remained as does the piano and bass, but the front-line has been augmented and now consists of trombone, tenor sax, guitar and Hammond B-3 organ.

The addition of guitarist Ed Verhoeff on guitar makes possible the group’s exploration of the music of Carlos Santana which it does with its interpretations of five of Santana’s originals at the Bimhuis concert.

Tenor saxophonist Ben van den Dungen is also a constant between the two manifestations of Nueva Manteca and he’s added his virtuosity on soprano saxophone to the current edition of Nueva Manteca.

Of course, throughout its many iterations, Jan Laurens Hartong, who founded the group in 1983 lends continuity and constant creativity through his compelling arrangements of everything from Broadway shows such as West Side Story and Porgy and Bess to Jazz standards that include Victor Feldman’s Seven Steps to Heaven and Wayne Shorter’s Speak No Evil.

If you are a fan of Latin Jazz, you owe it to yourself to check out Nueva Manteca

Here’s more about Nueva Manteca and Nueva Manteca Live! 25 Years from the insert notes to the latest recording as written by Jan Laurens Hartong:

“Inspired by developments in the 70's and 80's when Latin Music became a rage under the name of Salsa, an 8-piece Latin Jazz group was formed in Rotterdam , the Netherlands in 1988. Some of us had been inspired by groups such as the Fort Apache band, Afro-Cuba and Irakere. Study travels to Cuba had been undertaken to work with masters such as Emiliano Salvador and Oscarito Valdes(Afro Cuba). As a result, the Cuban concept of using the drumset in combination with percussion was adopted by Nueva Manteca. The new band based itself on the Cubop style with the purpose of expanding it in a multilateral way, hence the adjective nueva . Since its formation, Nueva Manteca has been fortunate to be able to build a large following in Europe, the USA and Latin America. The music took us to many places including the USA, Canada, Colombia, Mexico, Trinidad, Curacao and many European countries. An absolute highlight was the honorable invitation we received to perform on the closing night of the 2004 Puerto Rico Heineken Jazz Fest where we were introduced as ' Europe's ambassadors of Latin Jazz'.

We initiated a unique state-sponsored concert series entitled "Nueva Manteca meets the legends", performing in the prestigious concert halls of Holland, including the world-famous Concertgebouw in Amsterdam. The series was breaking new ground for Latin Music. Over the years we had the privilege to host such respected players as Nicky Marrero, Armando Peraza, Giovanni Hidalgo , Orestes Vilato, Ralph Irizarry, Luis Conte, Bobby Sanabria, Dave Valentin, Claudio Roditi and Juancito Torres.

Our recordings, 9 in total, so far have been very well received from the start internationally.

The release of the CD "Let’s Face the Music and Dance" on the Blue Note label (1996) was a milestone, marking the first major-label signing of a European Latin Jazz group.

Already since 1993 Nueva Manteca had begun to produce thematic projects such as Porgy & Bess, My Fair Lady, West Side Story, Congo Square: Tribute to the music of New Orleans), Tango Con Clave Tribute to Astor Piazzolla) , Chicano Rock, arranging a wide variety of compositions which provided different kinds of musical challenges.

In addition to our instrumental music we created 2 religious works featuring vocalists - Misa Afro Cuban Sanctus and Requiem Para El Mundo which we successfully performed in Israel with top singers of that country.

One of the appealing and distinctive aspects of Nueva Manteca's albums has been the way we tried to "shed new light' on the above-mentioned material, translating it into Latin Jazz, synthesizing the Afro Caribbean traditions with Jazz and European Classical music.

Inspired by the work of the great Ahmad Jamal we generally approach songs more as a 'compositional device' which allows for interpretations whereby the song becomes a 'story' comprising edited musical scenes in the form of heads, intros, interludes, vamps, solo choruses, outros. Much like film editing. That way each musical scene contributes to the progress of the story of the song. Arranging becomes composing. We feel that with this approach we have created our own niche in the Latin world. Kudos must go to all the great guys who have been part of the Nueva Manteca family, past and present. Without your contribution and talent all of the above could not have been accomplished.

This 25th anniversary 2-CD package presents music and musicians from past and present and is dedicated to colleagues all over the world who keep Latin Jazz alive and kicking.

• JAN LAURENS HARTONG”

The following video captures some of the excitement of the group in performance at The Bimhuis and features the Santana Evil Ways track from the 2013 concert at The Bimhuis.

Mark Murphy: 1932-2015, R.I.P.

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

“The first time I heard Mark Murphy was at a session in a jazz club in Los Angeles. He was singing with just a rhythm section, and without benefit of rehearsal, special arrangement or a supporting brass section. He made it very obvious that he is one of the most positive musical personalities on the scene today. He is not only startlingly original and inventive, but he also possesses that polished vocal technique needed to carry out his ideas and variations. Mark is not only a singer, but a real vocal musician. And, gratifyingly enough, he’s become a real inside favorite with many of the more discerning people in the entertainment business.”

- Bill Holman, tenor saxophonist, bandleader, arranger-composer

“Murphy long ago resigned himself to the idea that he would never be a household name. Yet his is one of the most consistently prolific and rewarding careers in modern music.”

“There is no one better at taking a familiar or even unfamiliar old song and turning it inside out, spilling its guts and finding the feeling underneath,”

“Murphy does not abstract and skewer a song merely for the sake of being different, but to get at its inner meaning. By making you think differently about a song you’ve heard before, he makes it relevant and meaningful all over again.”

- Will Friedwald, A Biographical Guide to the Great Jazz and Pop Singers.

“You find out who you are from improvisation,” Mr. Murphy said in 1997, describing his music and, in a larger sense, his life. “You throw away what’s not needed and get to what’s real.”

“Every musician that has ever worked with Mark confirms that he has remarkable time. Mark does stunning things with phrasing. His range has increased enormously — it goes from falsetto (in which he can do beautiful trumpet-like shakes) down to a rich baritone. His control permits him to sing long lines. He works his way through chord changes like a horn player without forgetting that his instrument is the voice.”

- Gene Lees

“It is a well known fact, that the human voice is the most difficult and most complicated musical instrument. After listening to MARK MURPHY with the above mentioned statement in the back of your mind, you will agree that you have just heard one of the greatest instrumentalists of our time. What always strikes me about him, is his voice control and the way he builds his phrases.

- Joop De Roo, Head of Entertainment, Radio and Television, Hilversum, The Netherlands

“His sure and swinging time, his musical and ever-inventive phrasing and that certain quality of sound and feeling combined with time and taste that to me spell Jazz.” 

- Dan Morgenstern

I bought Mark Murphy’s 1959 Capitol LP This Could Be The Start of Something (Big) [T-1177] without ever hearing him sing a note.

I bought it because the arrangements were by Bill Holman and the band playing them featured a bunch of my favorite West Coast Jazz musicians including Pete and Conte Candoli, Richie Kamuca and a rhythm section of Jimmy Rowles, Joe Mondragon and Mel Lewis.

But, in time, I came to treasure it for another reason and that reason was Mark Murphy’s singing. Man, could that guy make a song his own.

Two bars and you knew it was him.

Mark was the vocal personification of hip, slick and cool.

He reminded me of an extrovert Bobby Troup because they both had this uncanny ability to effortlessly get inside a lyric and to tell you a story with the voice rather than a horn as their instrument.

The last time I heard Mark in person was about 10 years ago when he appeared at Ruth Price’s Jazz Bakery in the company of pianist Alan Broadbent.

I spotted Mark in the foyer before the doors opened to let those in attendance into the auditorium-like seating in front of an elevated stage that was a singular feature of the old Jazz Bakery where everything was about making it a better performing and listening experience for the musicians and fans.

He was drinking a huge Coca Cola while standing at the condiments bar and as I approached him he looked down at it, then back up at me and said: “Gotta get the chops buzzing.”

I told him that I had been a fan of his music for many years.

“Oh yeah,” he said. “What’s your favorite recording?”

I listed the Capitol LP with the Bill Holman charts; the two he did for Riverside Records with the arrangements by Al Cohn [That’s How I Love The Blues, OJCCD 367-2] and Ernie Wilkins [Rah!, OJCCD 141-2]; the 1986 Milestone Records Night Moods: The Music of Ivan Lins [MCD 9145-2]; the 1993 date with the Metropole Orchestra as arranged and conducted by Rob Pronk and issued on CD as The Dream [Jive Music JM 2006-2]; the 2000 release of The Latin Porter Featuring Tom Harrell [Go Jazz 6051-2].

“Wow, Man! You really are into my music.”

At that point, the doors opened, the crowd pushed forward to go in and pick out their seats, and I turned to him and said: “And it seems like lot of other people dig your stuff, too.”

He smiled.

I split to get my seat which turned out to be right in front of pianist Alan Broadbent!

Mark didn’t make many trips to “the Left Coast” during the later years of his career.

I’m glad I didn’t miss this one.

Mark died on October 22, 2015 and the editorial staff at JazzProfiles wanted to remember him on these pages with the following obituary.

Matt Schudel

October 24, 2015

The Washington Post

“Mark Murphy, a daringly original jazz singer whose unchained improvisational style made him a cult favorite and a powerful influence on a generation of younger performers, died Oct. 22 at a retirement facility in Englewood, N.J. He was 83.

He had complications from pneumonia, said his manager, Jean-Pierre Leduc.

During a career of more than 50 years, Mr. Murphy gained a devoted following for performances that were an eclectic mix of edgy vocal fireworks and dark-of-night dramatic recitations. He reshaped familiar tunes with his rich, flexible baritone voice and restlessly explored new musical terrain with a bold, spontaneous flair.

He recorded more than 40 albums, appeared all over the world and was nominated for six Grammy Awards. But in the view of many critics and fans, his celebrity never matched his talent.

“Murphy long ago resigned himself to the idea that he would never be a household name,” critic Will Friedwald wrote in his 2010 book, “A Biographical Guide to the Great Jazz and Pop Singers.” “Yet his is one of the most consistently prolific and rewarding careers in modern music.”

Many of Mr. Murphy’s most ardent supporters were other musicians and singers, including Ella Fitzgerald, who once called him “my equal.”

Mr. Murphy brought a freewheeling impishness to his performances, which included the music of Duke Ellington and Cole Porter, the swaying bossa nova music of Brazil and one-of-a-kind works of bebop stream-of-consciousness. He would sometimes hold a single note for 12 bars, or suddenly soar from a deep, dark-hued tone to an anguished falsetto cry.

“For new people coming to Mark’s table, he is such a potent flavor,” Kurt Elling, one of Mr. Murphy’s best-known vocal proteges, told Jazz Times magazine in 2012. “It’s a very distinct and powerful spice, and not everyone’s ready for that.”

Mr. Murphy had minor hits in 1959 with This Could Be the Start of Something (Big) (written by talk-show host Steve Allen) and in 1963 with a version of Fly Me to the Moon, previously recorded by Frank Sinatra. But just when his career seemed ready to take off, the Beatles began to dominate the charts, and the landscape of popular music was forever changed.

From 1963 to 1972, he lived in London, singing in nightclubs and working as an actor. In an interview with jazz writer Leonard Feather, Mr. Murphy described those fallow years in the distinctive beatnik lingo he used throughout his life: “It was a bad time for all the boppers. All the undergrounders had surfaced in the late ’50s and early ’60s, then we had to scatter again and wait.”

When he returned to the United States, Mr. Murphy began to record for the Muse label, making a series of albums that showed a wide range of musical interests. He recorded ballads, Brazilian music and songs associated with Nat “King” Cole. He wrote lyrics for instrumental tunes, including Oliver Nelson’s “Stolen Moments” and Freddie Hubbard’s “Red Clay,” which entered the jazz repertoire.

In 1981, he recorded perhaps his most groundbreaking album, Bop for Kerouac, in which he blended the prose of Jack Kerouac’s novel “On the Road” with musical meditations on Charlie Parker, George Shearing and the jazz sensibility. (The album is currently out of print.)

“I grew to see that Kerouac’s writing in books like ‘On the Road’ was very jazz-like in the cadence and rhythms he used and very naturally musical,” Mr. Murphy told the Edmonton Journal in 2007. “So I borrowed that thing. I wanted to get the rush of that contemporaneous style of writing with nerve endings.”

On the final track of “Bop for Kerouac,” Mr. Murphy recited the closing lines of “On the Road”: “... the evening star must be drooping and shedding her sparkler dims on the prairie, which is just before the coming of complete night that blesses the earth, darkens all the rivers, cups the peaks and folds the final shore in, and nobody, nobody knows what’s going to happen to anybody besides the forlorn rags of growing old...”

He then sang The Ballad of the Sad Young Men, Fran Landesman and Tommy Wolf’s mournful ballad of dying hope and fading youth. Mr. Murphy’s performance was something of a literary tour de force, as if he were delivering a Shakespearean soliloquy in the guise of a jazz song.

“There is no one better at taking a familiar or even unfamiliar old song and turning it inside out, spilling its guts and finding the feeling underneath,” Friedwald wrote in “A Biographical Guide to the Great Jazz and Pop Singers.”

“Murphy does not abstract and skewer a song merely for the sake of being different, but to get at its inner meaning. By making you think differently about a song you’ve heard before, he makes it relevant and meaningful all over again.”

Mark Howe Murphy was born March 14, 1932, in Syracuse, N.Y., and grew up in nearby Fulton, N.Y. He came from a musical family, sang in church choirs and began studying piano at 7. He sang in his brother’s dance band as a teenager and modeled his early vocal style after Peggy Lee and Nat “King” Cole.

He studied music and theater at Syracuse University, graduating in 1953. That year, Sammy Davis Jr. heard Mr. Murphy at a jam session and invited the young singer to join him onstage.

Mr. Murphy recorded his first album in 1956, appeared several times on “The Steve Allen Show” and, after moving to Los Angeles, briefly worked as a backup pianist for comedian Don Rickles.

After he came back to the United States in the 1970s, Mr. Murphy lived in San Francisco for many years before moving to rural Pennsylvania in 1998. He cultivated a sometimes eccentric appearance, dying his facial hair and wearing a shaggy 1980s-era wig well into his 70s.

Although he rarely spoke about his private life, Mr. Murphy had a longtime relationship with his partner, Eddie O’Sullivan, who died in 1990. Survivors include a sister.

Mr. Murphy began to receive belated recognition in the 1990s for his uncompromising approach and for a supple voice that never seemed to age. He won DownBeat magazine’s readers’ poll as best jazz vocalist in 1996, 1997, 2000 and 2001.

He led master classes, taught jazz singing for several months each year in Graz, Austria, and in time came to be recognized as one the most innovative jazz singers of his generation. Echoes of his sound can be heard in Elling, Theo Bleckmann, Ian Shaw and many other singers.

Mr. Murphy made some of his most heartfelt albums late in his career, including “Once to Every Heart” (2005) and “Love Is What Stays” (2007). He continued to perform through 2012.

“You find out who you are from improvisation,” Mr. Murphy said in 1997, describing his music and, in a larger sense, his life. “You throw away what’s not needed and get to what’s real.””

Matt Schudel has been an obituary writer at The Washington Post since 2004.