Mark Murphy

One of the world’s most respected jazz vocalists, Mark Murphy’s prolific career spans 40 years and is most noted for his definitive and unique vocalese and vocal improvisations with both melody and lyrics. He is the recipient of the 1996, 1997, 2000, and 2001 Downbeat Magazine Readers Jazz Poll for Best Male Vocalist of the Year as well as six Grammy Award Nominations for Best Vocal Jazz Performance. He is also known for his original lyrics to the jazz classics Stolen Moments and Red Clay. At 74 years old, Mark Murphy has not slowed down, as he continues to tour internationally, appearing at festivals, concerts, in the best jazz clubs and on television programs throughout the U.S. , Europe, Australia and Japan. Indeed, 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.”