![]() ![]() And Kurt Elling, a Murphy protegé, said this: “For new people coming to Mark’s table, he is such a potent flavor. Ella Fitzgerald declared him “my equal.” Jon Hendricks dug Murphy. In 1953, Sammy Davis, Jr., hearing Mark Murphy sing at a jam session, invited the young vocalist to join him on stage. His career, then, was that of a cult figure, whose fans were the jazz cognoscenti and, significantly, the other jazz singers. In the late ’fifties, Murphy’s career appeared to be about to take off, as he had minor hits, first with Steve Allen’s “This Could Be the Start of Something Big” and later with a version of “Fly Me to the Moon.” But like other jazz musicians of his generation, he was a victim of the changing landscape of popular music, as Elvis Presley came on the scene and then the Beatles. He studied music and theater at Syracuse University. ![]() As a teenager, he sang in his brother’s dance band, modeling his early vocal style after Nat “King” Cole and Peggy Lee. ![]() He was nonetheless a tremendously influential American jazz singer with a free-wheeling, daringly original approach to his art.īorn into a musical family in Syracuse, New York, Murphy grew up singing in church choirs and took his first piano lessons at the age of seven. ![]()
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