September Ballads

Mark Murphy | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (October 25, 1990)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Milestone
• ASIN: B000000XSK
• Also Available in: Audio Cassette  |  Vinyl
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #248,424 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Track Listings

1. September Fifteenth

2. When She Is Mine

3. When This Love Affair Is Over

4. Night Life

5. Sack Full of Dreams

6. Crystal Silence

7. I Never Went Away

8. Sausalito

9. Para Nada

10. Spring Is Where You Are

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars BALLARDS SUNG WITH MUCH EMOTION, July 11, 2005

By 

Mr. Anthony W. Harden "hardmusl" (JOONDANNA, PERTH Australia) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: September Ballads (Audio CD)

This is one of Marks best albums...a recording you can sit back relax and listen to without all the stunts that he sometimes pulls on his recordings....mellow yet full of fire marks voice is rich and full...and takes you to places that are in your dreams...a beautiful cd sung by a master vocalist when he dosnt try to over sing it.. well done Mark you would make Sarah Vaughan proud of this one!!!! way to go....

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Murphy's Ballads, June 8, 2001

By 

P. Falk (Colorado, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: September Ballads (Audio CD)

Recently discovered this gem of a recording. Though the title suggests all slow sad songs, many of the ballads contain that energy that only Mark can give to a standard. Sausalito was written(words and music)by Mark. Also an Eliane Elias brazilian flavored tune graces this albumn. Definitely check this out, even if you're new to Mark Murphy!

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good musicianship, dated by the technology of the times, November 12, 2010

By 

Samuel Chell (Kenosha,, WI United States) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: September Ballads (Audio CD)

Released at least 20 years after Mark Murphy's still best-selling, "Rah," "September Ballads" presents a a bigger-voiced, more sensitive interpreter than the popular earlier release. In fact, Murphy's control of phrasing, breath support, security of pitch, and sustaining of long notes is of a quality to make a listener question why he is sometimes overlooked in discussions of that ever diminishing number of male jazz singers who continue to matter. Although the CD was issued contemporaneously with an LP edition on vinyl, listeners in this instance should definitely favor the CD, if only for its inclusion of one song omitted from the LP: Willie Nelson's "Night Life."

As a musician, I've tried to play the Nelson hit as an instrumental as well as attempted to accompany vocalists on the tune. Like most of the songs written since 1960, especially by guitar players whose primary idiom is country and western, the tune is relatively formless. The first eight bars, which are repeated, are quite effective, but at measure 17 Willie inserts a "bridge" that makes no sense harmonically and basically goes no where. Those jazz musicians who proudly display their "avantness" and aversion to conventional forms should listen to guitar-playing C&W songwriters if they want to experience formlessness and freedom. That's not meant as a criticism but an observation. Songwriters like Nelson work out a lyric and then find chords that fit it, if sometimes very loosely. The pieces are simply allowed to fall where they may: there's no attempt to approach the song with a set form in mind, such as a 12-bar blues or 32-bar pop song.

The result works quite well for Willie but is a hazard course for any other musician who attempts to interpret ("cover" has become the preferred, if regrettable, term these days) the same material. On the recent album featuring Nelson in concert with Wynton Marsalis, the song works largely because Wynton simply uses the extended space, the extra bars, the absence of chord changes to make use of his impressive repertory of growling and plunger-like Ellingtonian effects and colors. No matter that the horn is overkill compared to Willie's lyric and its intended mood: Marsalis puts on a striking show of his own, and he would do the same with any song that sustained a single C7 chord for essentially 8 measures.

The point is that Mark Murphy takes the Willie Nelson hit and alters it just enough to make it workable for a jazz singer. In fact, he's tightened it up sufficiently for it be a "standard," with a life beyond its composer. Even dedicated fans of C&W music and/or W. Nelson deserve to hear the two versions side by side.

The reason this album isn't a five-star album, in this reviewer's opinion, has nothing to do with the material, or with Mark's performance or interpretations. The reverb is simply excessive, and moreover I detect the irritating, overly repeated sound of synthesizers (I shouldn't say so, but I know listeners who would use the term "cheesy" in describing them). Both the reverb and string synths were probably quite acceptable "back in the day," but since the late-80s they've worn out their welcome. Were the audio engineering "drier" (less heavy on the reverb) and the plug pulled on the synths, the listener's experience would be the better for it and, in the end, the result would be a more intimate connection between performer and listener.