Songbook (Mark Murphy album)

Songbook is a compilation album of American jazz vocalist Mark Murphy's Muse Records recordings. It was released by the 32 Jazz label in the United States in 1999. This album is a collection of songs from his Muse years 1972–1991.

Background
Muse Records was founded by Joe Fields in 1972. Fields sold the label in 1996 to Joel Dorn who released four compilation albums from Mark Murphy's Muse catalogue on the 32 Jazz label, Stolen...And Other Moments, Jazz Standards, Songbook, and Mark Murphy Sings Nat King Cole & More. Writer and broadcaster Michael Bourne put together the four collections.

This release collects standards recorded by Murphy on his Muse albums covering the years of the Great American Songbook and beyond. Murphy often recorded the rarely heard introduction to these songs, as well as uncommonly recorded alternate verses. For example, on "Body and Soul" from Mark Murphy Sings, Murphy explains, "I think I heard the verse on a Billie Holiday record, and I heard the particular chorus lyric on a Morgana King record, and I just put them together. I hadn't heard these lyrics to it in years by anybody, and we gave it a little 6/8 feel. It came out like a new song." Similarly, he records the rarely heard introduction to "As Time Goes By". And on "I Can't Get Started" he sings lyrics that Ira Gershwin wrote years after the song debuted in the Ziegfield Follies of 1936.

Murphy explains his approach, "I'm not a stylist. A stylist is typed and non fluid. I'm fluid. Every time I open my mouth to sing, it comes out somewhat differently. It actually helps me to deal with each respective audience because l've learned to read audiences. I can readily tell what's happening and what they want. Whereas a stylist comes out to sing and if the audience doesn't like it, he/she is stuck, because they can't do anything else to adapt to the demands for change".

According to Michael Bourne, Murphy particularly wanted "Again" from Stolen Moments included in the collection. Murphy said, "I use a 12/8 feel on the drums on the ballads, allowing me to do it incredibly slow. Yet it doesn't drag. You completely go with the word 'slow' or you go with the word 'fast.' There is nothing in between. There isn't kind of slow or kind of fast. Hey just listen to the words. It's all there".

Four Brazilian jazz standards are also contained in this collection from composers Antônio Carlos Jobim, Milton Nascimento, and Ivan Lins. Murphy not only recorded many over the years but also featured them in his live performances. He often devoted his second set of a nightclub engagement exclusively to Brazilian songs. Murphy said, "I don't hear much new material that knocks me out. The best songs now being written are coming from Brazil. It's almost as though they've written into the Brazilian Constitution that it is illegal to write a bad song".

A tribute to the lyricist Johnny Mercer is also included, "Miss You Mr. Mercer". Murphy said, "I always really loved Johnny Mercer, not only his lyrics but the fact that he was a genius and he could sing almost as good as Nat King Cole, which is as good as you can get".

Reception
Jason Elias assigns 4.5 stars to the album at AllMusic. He says, "This compilation has Murphy coming into his own (around the early '70s) as a dramatic and often flawless stylist". He calls the collection, "an excellent compilation that presents some of the finest and sometimes most emotionally draining of one of music's most talented and eclectic singers". He praises the compilation for finding definitive performances. He singles out for praise, "Triad", "How Are You Dreaming?", "No More", "Again", "We'll Be Together Again", "The Island", "Nothing Will Be as It Was Tomorrow", and "I Fall in Love Too Easily".

Scott Yanow says this release is "excellent" in his book The Jazz Singers: The Ultimate Guide.

In his book A Biographical Guide to the Great Jazz and Pop Singers, Will Friedwald says the four Muse anthologies issued by Joel Dorn show "the astonishing range and scope, not to mention sheer size, of the singer's seventies and eighties output". The releases reveal "his output has been so consistently excellent—that so many of these records deserve to be regarded, in retrospect, as classics of the jazz vocal genre—and that even his occasional missteps are instructive".

Personnel
Production


 * Michael Bourne – compilation producer, liner notes
 * Gene Paul – mastering
 * Page Simon – graphic design
 * Nancy Dwyer – graphic design
 * Becky Wisdom – production coordinator
 * Joel Dorn – series producer