Customer Reviews

Best of Mark Murphy

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I love this! I've been listening to Mark since I was born, 1969, but these songs had been long since forgotten in my house as we listened to his ever changing newest release. Dancing to his jazzy vocalese at 6 at the Dock in San Francisco, I never would have dreamed I'd hear him sing classic standards. In my adult life I've long been a fan of the crooners such as Frank, Sammie, and Dean. They're just so fun and simple to listen to. To hear Mark sing in this style! Now I get it, he has so much more talent. Listen to these few releases and you'll see, this was too easy for him, he was like a caged bird dieing to get out and show how he could fly. He does these standards beautifully, love listening to them, but I understand now why he went underground to do more......

I avoided buying this disc for a long time because I thought it was a career-spanning compilation of Mark's work and I'm not a big fan of those multi-decade samplers. But this is a well-chosen collection of some of the work Mark did for Capitol in the late 50's backed by a tight studio band and some interesting arrangements on several standards and some blues. I know I'll offend some jazz purists here but this is actually my favorite Murphy disc because its pre-vocalese and pre-experiemntation on his part - just mainstream treatments of some classic tunes. Not that his later evolution was bad but I prefer Murphy's tremendous pipes and meticulous phrasing applied to the classic great American song genre versus a more exploratory jazz context. If you love the classic songs and love Mark's chops, you'll love this disc.

This is the young Mark Murphy with some splendid Bill Holman arrangements. What more can I say?
The only shame is : Capitol why not issue all three Capitol albums?????????????