Customer Reviews

Rah

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(0)
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I bought the vinyl about 30 years ago, and spinned it over and over. This is Mark's best album ever. Beautiful arrangements. Green dolphin street, Out of this world, angel eyes, I never heard these better than with Mark.
But Riverside boys where's 'like love' and "I'll be seeing you" from the vinyl album? One Japanese version of RAH! has 13 tracks.(included 2 versions of My favourite things)
Why only 11 tracks on this CD?

Mark Murphy is the most underrecorded singer in any kind of genre. How can a person who is considered the consensus best male jazz singer today, at age 70, have such a limited catalogue? The mystery is deepened by this album. Some of it sounds dated; but overall, it is as great as it was 40 years ago. The highlight is the last cut, "Twisted." It's hard to imagine anyone improving on Annie Ross' take on her own classic; but Mr. Murphy succeeds. "Doodlin'" and "Miles Ahead" are also wonderful. Murphy's intonation and diction are always superb; and this album shows the beginings of a marvelous improviser. Highly recommended, even now.

Why Mark Murphy is not appearing at Carnegie Hall every night, or at least off Broadway, is a mystery to me. When Sinatra left this earth, I pulled out Mark's version of Angel Eyes. Frank's is great, but Mr. Murphy's is thrilling. Song for song this is probably Mark's Murphy best album. And his rendition of 'Spring Can Really Hang You Up The Most' is worth the price of admission. God Bless Mark Murphy.

The song selection, the arrangements and the vocals by Murphy are all excellent.

Side One is for when you want to relax. Side 2 is vocalese of 50's hard bop tunes.

I've owned this for over twenty years, and I'm not tired of it yet!

I first heard of Mark Murphy from the liner notes of of Kurt Elling's first side Close Your Eyes. There Elling states in the thanks, "To Jon Hendricks and Mark Murphy for teaching me how to sing jazz." I would later hear his music for the first time on a record a teacher would loan me when I was writing a lyric to the song Red Clay by Freddie Hubbard. I was at first upset that he had beaten me to it, but his voice and interpretation of the music was out of this world. I just recently purchased Rah from Amazon and while it is all standards with a few short bob-vocalese cuts at the end, standards never sounded so hip. Angel Eyes opens this swingin' side from Mark's early days moving right into hits like Green Dolphin Street, Spring Can Really Hang You Up The Most, and My Favorite Things. The last three cuts are Murphy's way of tipping his hat to the vocal jazz group, Lambert, Hendricks, and Ross. Though these final three are vocalese numbers they surprisingly fit right in with tone set by the preceding jazz standards. There is not one bad song on this who record.

It's a mystery, as other reviewers have pointed out, why Mark Murphy didn't get the degree of public acclaim his enormous talent should entitle him to. But nevermind that...just buy RAH and check it out. It's jazz classics like Green Dolphin Street and boppin' tour-de-forces like Twisted. Wonderful stuff. You've got Clark Terry trumpet, Jimmy Cleveland trombone...Wynton Kelly or Bill Evans on piano. Great stuff. And I agree with another reviewer who said just match up Mark Murphy and Sinatra on Angel Eyes, and you decide.

This record used to drive my mother crazy when I played it as a teen ager. Dad's friend Clarence was in music distribution to radio stations, etc. and gave Dad some demo records. I loved this until Mom took it away. Now I have it back!!! Even today I can remember a lot of the words, very innovative.