Search - Mark Murphy :: Bop for Miles

The Grand Master at Play

Rick Cornell | Reno, Nv USA | 03/06/2005

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Listening to this, Mark Murphy's tribute to Miles Davis, reminds me of watching a chess grand master at play.



Recorded live in Vienna in 1990 (by and large) but not released until 2004, this is a compilation of songs either written by Miles during the '50's and early '60's ("All Blues" and "Milestones"), standards played by Miles during the '50's (e.g., "My Ship Has Sailed", "Summertime" and "On Green Dolphin Street"), or songs created in or linked to the bop era (e.g., Art Farmer's "Farmer's Market" with Annie Ross' lyrics, and "Goodbye Pork Pie Hat", Mingus' tribute to Lester Young, with Joni Mitchell's much-later-added lyrics). The first ten cuts, all done live, are sung in one enormous medley. The set ends with an "encore-like" "Miles", Murphy's touching studio tribute to Miles done as a voice-piano duet with Peter Mihelich.



What an exhibition of grand mastery this is!



Consider "All Blues" and "Bye, Bye Blackbird", for example. In each, Murphy swoops through three octaves of scatting--yet never strains or cracks. The man knows the limits of his voice, and knows how to make them sound limitless.



Or consider "Summertime" and "Autumn Leaves". Here, Murphy changes up the lyrical rhythms, and in the process, changes the melodies--but never at the expense of the chord structure of the songs. The man knows how to improvise while respecting the original structure of the songs, and turn them into something completely new.



Or consider "On Green Dolphin Street". Here, Murphy, after doing the same type of "change-up" on the first chorus, sings three parts simultaneously on the second chorus. A singer cannot harmonize with himself while singing live, but Murphy comes as close as a singer can come to doing that.



Or consider "Farmer's Market." It's one thing to sound like a tenor saxophone while scatting through three octaves. It's something else to sound like Sonny Rollins, which is whom Mark Murphy sounds like here.



One of the incomprehensible injustices in jazz is the out-of-print status of "Bop for Kerouac". Until some label decides to be a loss-leader and belly up to the bar, I think that this album serves as the best of mid-to-late career Mark Murphy, one of the greatest jazz singers who ever lived. Buy it for that reason, if for no other. RC"