Customer Reviews

Stolen & Other Moments

5 star:		(3)
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Mark Murphy has been a top-notch purveyor of hip jazz vocals for over four decades, reaching an early high-water mark with the fantastic "Rah" LP for Riverside in 1961. This unbelievably great 2-CD set contains gem after gem culled from his Muse Records period throughout the 70s and 80s. There is SO MUCH incredible material here! Straight-ahead jazz, samba/bossa, superior pop, excellent fusion, incomparable cabaret renditions that bring new shading to material you've heard perhaps too many times, always done with impeccable taste. I mean, you really need this package: "I'm Glad There Is You," "Moody's Mood," "Two Kites," "On The Red Clay"...oh yeah, "Boplicity," "Lookin' For Another Pure Love," everything here is just incredible. Forget the man's hairstyle, ignore that moustache, it's all irrelevant. Here is one of the indisputably coolest jazz-pop singers of them all. BUY THIS ALBUM! Because every time you listen to it, you'll have a new and different revelation. For mature listeners of all persuasions.

This is a great collection, but sadly, it is out of print and doesn't seem to be available ANYWHERE (though, I guess that could change at any time). I'm sure a copy will surface at some point on E-b**, so you might want to check there regularly. But I'm pretty sure everything here is at least available through Murphy's other CDs, and there are far worse investments than buying all the individual Murphy CD's you'd need to collect these same tracks. Not a bad track in the bunch, and an electic variety, as another reviewer indicated.

Like the other reviewers said, a GREAT collection---very thoughtfully selected, arranged, and annotated by long time jazz vocal dj Michael Bourne(it was the first of four double CD's he put together from the Muse records years). Unmentioned in the above reviews is that each of the 2 discs are "themed". The second is titled "mark, jack, and jazz" and it compiles--in addition to really swinging "jazz related" numbers, all the mark-reads-kerouac things from the two muse records, "bop for kerouac" and "kerouac, then and now" . Will Freidwald in his knowing and glowing profile of MM from his "A Biographical Guide to the Great Jazz and Pop Singers" 2010 says (though he recommends the original issues), "The four kerouac pieces may well be the most moving things Murphy ever recorded". No small praise. And right on. Well worth seeking even at the premium price it now commands.