Once to Every Heart (Verve Music Group)
Mark Murphy
Released September 27, 2005
Prix du Jazz Vocal de l’Académie du Jazz 2018
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Once to Every Heart is the 44th recorded album by American jazz vocalist Mark Murphy. It was recorded when Murphy was 70 years old and released by Verve Records three years later in the United States in 2005. The release is a collection of torch songs and ballads praised by many reviews as a late career masterpiece by Mark Murphy. The project was spearheaded by producer Till Brönner after recording with Murphy for Brönner’s album Blue Eyed Soul.
Mark Murphy recorded Once to Every Heart in two days at Till’s Studio, Berlin in 2002 with Brönner and pianist Frank Chastenier. Orchestrations were later added by Nan Schwartz. The release includes Murphy’s own composition “I Know You From Somewhere” (track 5). Brönner wrote “Our Game” with Rob Hoare.
Peter Jones in the biography This is Hip: The Life of Mark Murphy, and James Gavin in the liner notes to Once to Every Heart, both describe the initial encounter between Murphy and Brönner and the development of the album. Author Jones recounts that Brönner was passing by the A-Trane jazz club in Berlin after a radio engagement in 2001 and saw that Murphy was performing. Brönner, listening from the front of the stage in the half-empty club, “became aware that Murphy was directing the local trio in a way he had never seen a singer do before. And when Mark sat down alone at the piano to accompany himself on a ballad at the end of the show, Brönner found that tears were rolling down his cheeks”. It was the first time Brönner had seen Murphy live. Brönner told James Gavin that Murphy “was absolutely brilliant, showing the trio what he wanted onstage by almost ‘conducting’ with his voice…I started crying because it touched me so much”.
After their meeting, Murphy later recorded “Dim the Lights” on Brönner’s own Blue Eyed Soul in a trip-hop style. Brönner said, “as he was leaving the studio, I put to him the idea of recording an album in there. He said, ‘What kind of album?’ I said, ‘I remember that evening at the A-Trane, and very few things in life have moved me as much as that performance”. But Murphy was reluctant to do an all ballad album. Brönner persisted. Jones writes, “His insight was that Murphy possessed the rare ability to tap into profound, half-buried emotional conflicts, in a way that made his ballad performances extremely moving”. Brönner said, “For me, only Frank Sinatra has the same ability to make me feel he is speaking to me when he sings…The songs that Mark sounded so good on were the ones that contained a big unresolved emotion. The mother of all love songs is disappointment, unrequited love, and that’s something that you feel you shouldn’t show”.
Dan Ouellette interviewed Murphy for a feature article in DownBeat in 1997. Murphy said, “I love doing ballads. That’s when I feel I can communicate one-to-one with listeners. People tell me that it’s as if I’m singing directly to them… But the gold is that when you reach maturity as vocalists, you begin to sing your life. You’re not just performing. You’re putting your life into your songs. “Author Will Friedwald points out that Once to Every Heart was Murphy’s first release for a major label since Song For the Geese eight years earlier and his first album of standards and ballads in nearly two decades.
Mark Murphy recorded the tracks in two days in 2002 at Till’s Studio, Berlin with Till Brönner and Frank Chastenier. Orchestrations were later added at Teldex Studio in Berlin. Their idea was to create an atmosphere of relaxation and intimacy. Murphy was close-miked and the only other musicians in the studio were Brönner and pianist Frank Chastenier. Brönner’s own contributions were sparse. Brönner said, “What could you possibly add after this guy sang”?
Murphy later gave Brönner a recording of his that he liked with string arrangements by Nan Schwartz, a student of Johnny Mandel’s. Brönner contacted Schwartz. And after listening to tapes of what Murphy had recorded in Brönner’s studio, Schwartz said, “I am absolutely overwhelmed by what I’m hearing, and I have to be part of this production. No matter what kind of budget you have, we’ll find a way to do it.”Schwartz did string arrangements to fit around the existing recordings, added bassist Christian Von Kaphengst, flutes, and overdubbed the original recordings in Berlin, conducting the Deutsches Symphonie Orchester.
Speaking with Ted Pankin in a Jazziz interview about working with orchestrator Nan Schwartz, Murphy said, “I wasn’t there when the orchestra was put on. In the old days, everything you heard on the LPs was done right there, including the strings. I don’t know whether I prefer it or not. Well, see, with Nan Schwartz, she has a sixth sense about how I sing, and so I have no worries there”.
After the orchestrations were added Brönner was able to convince Universal/Verve to release the project though they had been initially uninterested. However, Murphy was under contract with HighNote and so there was a long delay in releasing the album. The album’s title song was one that Murphy had been carrying for decades, ever since he heard the Jo Stafford single from 1952 written by Paul Weston, Stafford’s husband with lyrics by Michael S Stoner.
In the liner notes, Murphy describes the album as “one of the greatest thrills of my career.” He told James Gavin, “I guess maybe it’s the best thing I’ve done”. “I don’t ever want to record any other way,” he told Jazz Times…I’d like to make a couple more records like that and see where it leads us.”Gavin describes Murphy as “a bruised romantic who goes fearlessly into the dark places of the soul. He is miked so closely here that not a crevice of his voice is unexposed…The results are as stark and powerful as BIllie Holiday’s Lady in Satin”. Gavin calls Murphy “one of the greatest singer-storytellers in jazz”. He characterizes Murphy’s voice as “a rugged bass-baritone…now richer then ever”.
Track Listing:
1. I’m Through with Love (Gus Kahn / Jay Livingston / Matty Malneck) 7:36
2. When I Fall in Love/My One and Only Love (Edward Heyman / Robert Mellin / Guy Wood / Victor Young) 5:06
3. Skylark/You Don’t Know What Love Is (Hoagy Carmichael / Gene DePaul / Johnny Mercer / Don Raye) 6:21
4. Our Game (Rob Hoare) 6:13
5. I Know You from Somewhere (Mark Murphy) 6:40
6. Bein’ Green (Joe Raposo) 4:59
7. Once to Every Heart (Paul Weston) 8:41
8. It Never Entered My Mind (Lorenz Hart / Richard Rodgers) 3:58
9. Do Nothin’ Till You Hear from Me (Duke Ellington / Sidney Keith Russell) 4:33
10. Love Is Here to Stay (George Gershwin / Ira Gershwin) 3:02
Personnel:
Mark Murphy: vocals, arranger (vocal, piano and horn arrangements) and piano (9)
Till Brönner: trumpet, flugelhorn, arranger (vocal, piano and horn arrangements)
Frank Chastenier: piano, arranger (vocal, piano and horn arrangements)
Deutsches Symphonie Orchester (1, 3-5, 7, 9)
Nan Schwartz: orchestral arrangements and conductor
Joris Bartsch Buhle: concertmaster
Christian Von Kaphengst: double bass
Christrian Büttner, Daniel Draganov, Martin Eßmann, Anne Feltz, Brigitte Käser, Juliana Maniak, Anna Morgunova, Hannes Neubert, Michiko Prysiasznik, Pjotr Prysiasznik, Song Qiang, Ralf Zettl, Barbara Sadowski, Susanne Tribut and Barbara Weigle: violin
Holger Herzog, Atsuko Matsuaki, Reinald Ross, Martin Schaller, Christoph Starke, Gabriel Tamayo: viola
Agnieszka Antonina Bartsch, Ulf Borgwart, David Hausdorf, Volkmar Weiche: cello
Igor Prokopec, Markus Rex, Martin Schaal: bass
Tilmann Dehnhard, Christian Raake: flute
Recorded in 2002: basic tracks recorded at Till’s Studio, Berlin, by Holger Schwark; orchestra recorded at Teldex Studio, Berlin, by Tobias Lehmann
Producer: Till Brönner
Executive producers: Michael Schöbel and Pino Brönner
Mixing: Arne Schumann
Mastering: Götz-Michael Rieth
Photography: Billy & Hells
Artwork: Scrollan
Review:
Hyperbolic as it may sound, I’d argue that Mark Murphy is incapable of making a bad album. In a recording career that spans five decades (next year marks the golden anniversary of his Decca debut, Meet Mark Murphy), nearly 50 discs and more than a dozen labels, the long-reigning king of vocal hipsterism has yet to deliver anything less than ingenious. Now at 73, when most singers have been reduced to a pale reflection of their former vibrant selves, Murphy reaches remarkable new heights (or perhaps depths is more accurate, given the album’s quietly contemplative moodiness) with his Verve debut.
Born out of Murphy’s understandable admiration for eerily Chet Baker-esque German trumpeter (and sometime vocalist) Till Bronner, Once to Every Heart began taking shape three years ago with no set play list, no blueprint: just singer and accompanists (Bronner on trumpet and flugelhorn plus pianist Frank Chastenier) in a Berlin studio. Acoustic bass, courtesy of Christian Von Kaphengst, and orchestral strings (under the direction of concertmaster Joris Bartsch Buhle) were subsequently added to six tracks. How stunning are the results? Suffice it to say that I consider this, in a year crowded with laudable releases, the single finest jazz-vocal album of 2005.
Murphy also surfaces on Chasin’ the Jazz Gone By, the Five Corners Quintet’s keenly intelligent homage to masters of the ’50s and ’60s. Murphy contributes to three tracks, including a spoken word overlay on “Jamming With Mr. Hoagland” that’s like a gin-soaked rag set atop red-hot coals, and a haunting, hypnotic reworking of his early career highlight, “This Could Be the Start of Something Big.” But to talk only about Murphy would be a disservice to the intense degree of imagination that pervades the entire disc. Celebratory without being derivative, the quintet evokes the spirits of Stan Kenton, Dave Brubeck, Cal Tjader and Stan Getz while blending Cuban fire, Brazilian fever and West Coast ice-coolness. Best retro-blurring moment: when a funk-rock groove worthy of Archie Bell is welded to the thunder of a Buddy Rich-esque big band sound on “Unsquare Bossa.”
Christopher Loudon (JazzTimes)
