Mark Murphy

My singing evolved with a feeling of intense relaxation, always using my diaphram and breathing specifically through my nose.

Your accompanist has a lot to do with how you sing, so experiment and choose your partner wisely.

Critics don’t buy records. They get ’em free.

Living is easy with eyes closed.

When you know the lyrics to a tune, you have some kind of insight as to it’s composition.

Jazz music is haunted by its own hungry ghosts.

I get interested in the various ways that music is being done in the culture, and some of it I like thoroughly enough to want to learn about it. The way I have been successful at doing that is to become part of it.

In the 1990s, with Mariah Carey, Whitney Houston, those really big female artists were very glamorous, it was all about the glamour at that time. And so there was a big switch, the desire to be more who you were, not so beholden to this whole standard of beauty. It was a liberation. You see Mary J Blige – she did the same, wearing the combat boots.

When Hank Jones had his night off, I would get somebody to take my place as intermission pianist and I’d play the show with Ella, so I would get a chance to play with Ray Brown and Charlie Smith as well.

Jazz speaks for life. This is triumphant music.

The wonderful thing about Jazz is its willingness to take chances.

Musicians tell me, if what I’m doing is right, they should never have gone to school.

A Jazz man should be saying what he feels: humor, sadness, joy… all the things that humans have.

Creativity is more than just being different. Anybody can plan weird; that’s easy. What’s hard is to be as simple as Bach. Anyone can make the simple complicated. Creativity is making the complicated simple.

I was unfashionable before anyone knew who I was.

I regard singing pretty much like acting. Each song is like playing a different role. I get very involved with my material. I feel a responsibility for the emotion it brings out in the listener.

Every time I see a musician – it doesn’t matter what age – that inspires me, there’s always a secret little wish that maybe we’ll play together, because that’s how I learn and grow and so forth, you know. But hopefully there’s a lot more.