Artist : Mark Murphy
Album : Love Is What Stays
Label : Verve
Genre : Jazz
Bitrate : 181 kbps avg
Source : CD (LP)
Playtime : 01:04:07 (87 MB)
Rls date : 2007-02-01
Store date : 2007-02-05
[Track List]
1. Stolen Moments 2:40
2. Angel Eyes 8:06
3. My Foolish Heart 5:14
4. So Doggone Lonesome 4:51
5. What If 7:18
6. The Interview 5:41
7. Once Upon a Summertime 5:34
8. Stolen Moments (1st Reprise) 1:03
9. Love Is What Stays 6:41
10.Stolen Moments (2nd Reprise) 1:22
11.Too Late Now 7:54
12.Blue Cell Phone 3:04
13.Did I Ever Really Live 4:39
The passage of time is on Mark Murphy's mind a lot these days, as this album
suggests. "At my age," he says, "you become boggled
by how time affects your future, your past, and the present. It's tickin' away,
and you can't do nothin' about it."
But time has been good to his voice: a rich, virile,
attractively craggy bass-baritone, etched with the wisdom of a fifty-year
journey. It's a sound that could have crept from the
shadows of some smoky dive in a Robert Mitchum film noir. "Just listen to Mark
Murphy, and the odds are in favor of your being
provoked to extremes," declared the liner notes of his first LP, made for Decca
in 1956. Murphy, the writer added, "is one of the
great singers of our times."
All that could just as well be said today. The evidence is on this new album,
recorded fifty years after Mark's Decca debut. Love
Is What Stays may be the truest portrait ever of this quirky, artistically
fearless, emotionally naked jazz singer. At an age
when most vocalists have either called it quits or are coasting on the past,
Mark is as restless as he was in the '50s, when his
career launched him on a Kerouacian road trip without end. In 2006 he went to
Berlin, where he made this CD. On it, Mark dips into
the songs of Johnny Cash, Oliver Nelson, Alan Jay Lerner, and Coldplay; recites
some of his spacey, free-form poetry; unveils the
latest of his dreamlike lyrics; and scats as freely as John Coltrane played.
Joining Mark is the same team that helped make his prior album, Once to Every
Heart, his biggest success in years. That was the
project that united him with Till Br÷nner, Germany's most popular and
adventurous trumpeter. Born in 1971, Till has already
earned a place among the best jazz minimalists. Beneath his ice-blue tone and
cool swagger is a depth of feeling that "blew me
away," says Mark; it sets Till far above most of today's bloodless, scholarly
jazz robots. As this album's producer and bandleader,
he gathered a group of young musicians that Mark adores. "I get their energy,"
he says. "It energizes me."
Like Once to Every Heart, this album features the
haunting string charts of Nan Schwartz, the Emmy- and Grammy-nominated arranger.
A pretty blonde from Southern California, Schwartz
has arranged for Ray Charles, the Boston Pops, and Eddie Daniels, and has scored
several top American TV shows, including In the Heat
of the Night and Cagney & Lacey. Nan is a master of less-is-more, and a
storyteller without words.
It was Till's idea to use "Stolen Moments", Mark's
longtime signature song, as a recurring theme for this album. Mark wrote the
words, which are set to a classic 1961 instrumental
by Oliver Nelson. Says Till: "Stolen Moments seemed to be a nice vehicle to show
that Mark is drawing on a gigantic era that he, among
others, has created, and that he will leave us as a legacy someday."
Mark recorded a torchy version of "Angel Eyes" on Rah!, his acclaimed 1961album,
whose all-star band included Bill Evans. "Everyone
was singing it then, it was very hip," says Mark. "And it still is. And one
reason it is still hip is that you can keep redoing
it in different ways." This cooler, tougher new version features a verse written
in 1975 for June Christy. Till and his bandmates -
notably pianist Frank Chastenier and guitarist Johan Leijonhufvud - sound
appropriately low-down and funky.
What would he like the people who hear this album to
take away with them? "Really, that I sing my life," he says. "I'm not just up
there fooling around; the words and notes I sing are,
I hope, parts of my life that I'm sharing with the audience. I think you've got
to have that attitude, or it is simply not sincere."