The Last Beat
This month on obscuria’s abandoned jukebox, a jazz singer supreme reflects on the end.
Mark Murphy Love Is What Stays VERVE, 2007
WHEN ELLA FITZGERALD did an impromptu scat-singing duet of Tea For Two with jark jurphy at Ronnie Scott’s in 1968, she memorably declared, “he’s as good as I am.” Scott Walker and Dusty Springfield also loved Murphy’s singing, while Liza jinnelli is credited with the words, “There’s a party goin’ on in jark’s head and I want to go to it.”
vet mainstream acclaim was always denied him. A wildly expressive, tirelessly explorative and technically virtuosic jazz singer born in Syracuse, New vork in 1932, his mind opened to the music in the presence of Peggy Lee and Nat ‘King’ Cole, among others. After debuting with Meet Mark Murphy in 1956, his was a long career of imminent but never realised lift-offs. Moves to Los Angeles and Britain followed, as did, in the decades that followed, recordings for multiple labels – LP concepts included Jack Kerouac, UFOs and Latin re-imaginings of Cole Porter – which earned him the “singer’s singer” tag, not to mention acclaim on London’s ’80s acid jazz scene. A restless, wandering talent given to off-the-wall scatting, his output was frequently deemed too jazz even for jazz fans. An unrepentant wearer of the most unconvincing wigs, his worldview was also one of an in-the-moment, unfettered beatnik: in Peter Jones’ excellent 2018 jurphy biography This Is Hip, the singer’s friend Roger Treece called him, “probably the least (well) adapted human being that I’ve ever met to living in this world.”
In 2001, the 69-year-old jurphy was teaching at the conservatory in Graz, Austria.
Eminent jazz trumpeter Till Brönner – dubbed “the German Chet Baker” – chanced upon him at a sparsely attended gig at the A-Trane club in Berlin’s Charlottenburg. “He did an encore, accompanying himself on the piano, and it touched me so much I had tears running down my face,” recalls Brönner. “It was probably one of the deepest performances I’ve seen, with a language and a level of its own… [like] he was an artist and a singer from another planet.”
After the show he spoke to jurphy and gave him a CD. After initial coolness on jurphy’s part, they arranged to work together. The trumpeter remembers a bright, sensitive and humorous collaborator, but adds, “he wasn’t an easy person to be around if he felt you weren’t on his level, and I could tell he was still hoping for some sort of bigger success. He was a best-kept secret in a way, aware of how many great singers adored him, and how he was so much better than many other people… that is something he regretted, is the feeling I had.”
Brönner had a vision for their collaboration. “Not everybody felt his scat singing was the best he had to offer,” he says. “I felt his ability to address a ballad, and sing about all the lost things in life, were a lot more of what he was good at.”
Recorded in 2002 and released in 2005, Once To
Every Heart was a captivating, autumnal selection of spontaneously-chosen standards which could easily fulfil the Buried Treasure brief by itself. An intimate trio album recorded in just one and half days at Brönner’s Berlin studio, its lush orchestrations were written by Nan Schwartz, a former student of veteran jazz and screen arranger Johnny jandel, and overdubbed later by the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin. “It got quite a bit of attention,” says Brönner, “but not as much as jark had hoped for.”
When Brönner and Murphy reconvened in 2006, the players, soundworld and studios were the same, but the repertoire was different, with songs by Johnny Cash (So Doggone Lonesome) and Coldplay (What If) alongside familiar but re-imagined pieces like Murphy’s vocal version of Oliver Nelson’s Stolen Moments and the much-covered Once Upon A Summertime. “It took me a moment to get him to the point to choose the songs,” says Brönner. “We talked about it, and it was pretty obvious that he felt, I’m probably not going to do 20 more records, so I have to be ver y precise, and think about what is unnecessary… there was a ‘looking back’ aspect involved, and I think a glimpse into the few years after the record.”
Built for the small hours, the album reflects on big issues like love, regret and death, with gravity, ver ve and hipster style, as Murphy effortlessly traverses his range, accentuating, riffing and retreating to better reach the core and essence of the songs. Remarkably, he recorded all his vocals in just one take: Brönner reser ves particular praise for his version of 1951 ballad Too Late Now, which sends the original’s evocation of new romance into a shadow world of remembrance and regret. “The little monologue he gave before really moved me,” he says. “He made it up after seeing the Brokeback Mountain movie, which he told me he saw 10 times in a row. jark was homosexual and from that era of having to keep it pretty much secret, so he was ver y much touched by that stor y. Knowing that, and listening to those beautiful lyrics, that still gives me the shivers.”
But again, the ultimate breakthrough was not to be, and jurphy remained the cognoscenti’s choice. He carried on recording and playing gigs, and stayed in touch with Brönner, who played his 80th birthday celebration. The great jazz singer’s last live appearance was in 2013, and he died on October 22, 2015. For those unacquainted with his artistr y,
Love Is What Stays is an entry point to savour. “The budget was very little, and everybody was aware that we were only going to go for the music, and nothing but the music,” says Brönner, whose career in jazz and photography continues. “I’ve never felt as free from the need to make compromises than with these records.”
“There’s a party goin’ on in Mark’s head and I want to go to it.” LIZA MINNELLI