Mark Murphy – Rah (the withdrawn tracks)

The removal, alteration or substitution of tracks from albums is enough to reduce music collectors into drooling, quivering fools.  

Most famously, initial (and hastily withdrawn) pressings of The Beatles’ Revolver album featured a different mix of the closing track, Tomorrow Never Knows.  Oddly enough, this substitution went unnoticed for over thirty years after the album’s release in 1966.

Original copies of Brian Eno & David Byrne’s album My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts featured a track – Qu’ran – that included chants lifted from the Qur’an.  The track was quietly removed from subsequent pressings following complaints from received from Islamic organisations.  

The closing song on John Fogerty’s 1985 album Centerfield - Zanz Kant Danz - was re-titled and re-recorded.  It became Vanz Kant Danz, so as to avoid a legal action from Saul Zaentz, owner of Fantasy Records, Fogerty’s old label.  Fogerty’s relationship with Zaentz was a fractious one at best, it is thought by some that the closing song on side one of the album – Mr Greed – is also dedicated to his former label boss.

Original pressings of Van Morrison’s Moondance feature a distinctly different mix of Into The Mystic.

Frank Zappa’s 1976 double live album Zappa In New York was withdrawn and reissued minus Punky’s Whips – a frankly slanderous (but highly amusing) skit on the somewhat effeminate appearance of guitarist Punky Meadows from American rock band, Angel.

Meanwhile, Michael Jackson’s HIStory compilation was recalled due to the frankly appalling and noxious lyrics to They Don’t Care About Us –

“Jew me, sue me, everybody do me

Kick me, kike me, don't you black or white me.”

Jackson countered by stating that some of his best friends were Jewish.

Mark Murphy’s 1961 debut for the Riverside label was perhaps the first major turning point in his long recording career.  His two albums for American Decca and three for Capitol were recorded along typical record label easy-listening lifestyle templates, the finish products designed to sit alongside what Sinatra and Nat Cole were doing at the time. 

In 1960, Mark Murphy landed a two album deal with Orrin Keepnews and Bill Grauer’s independent Riverside label.  Recorded in Autumn 1961, the resulting LP – Rah – had little in common with his five previous albums.  The eclectic song selection was driven by a ten-piece band, with Ernie Wilkins’ arrangements leaning strongly towards the horn section.  Indeed, you’d be hard pushed to identify the individual members of the rhythm section i.e. pianists Bill Evans and Wynton Kelly or guitarist Barry Galbraith (sharp-eyed collectors and crate diggers will identify that several of those present has been together for Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue a few years earlier). Rah is a full-on jazz vocal LP, aimed squarely at the post-bop hepcat rather than the middle-class casual-listening sophisticate.  

 

Time has been kind to this album.  In Norbert Warner’s fanzine Mark Times, Rah was regularly voted top album in the Murphy discography.  No collection of jazz vocal albums is complete without it. Although Rah does not sound altogether contemporary, neither does it sound terribly dated.  Meanwhile, it doesn’t actually sound like any other record that I can think of. 

Two particular tracks caught the attention of songwriters, publishers and their respective lawyers.  Rodgers & Hammerstein’s My Favorite Things contained three new verses and a chorus written by Mark: -

“John Coltrane talkin’

Miles and Gil blowin’

Mulligan’s walkin’

The Hi-Los hi-lowin’

Ray Charles and Basie and Garner with strings

These are a few of my favorite things

Anita in motion and Peggy Lee groovin’

Atlantic Ocean how Cannonball’s movin’

Day John and Annie when Monterey swings

These are a few of my favorite things

Memories of Billie the soul and the heartache

Sessions at daybreak in which I can partake

Old Ernie Wilkins he sure gives you wings

These are a few of my favorite things

When some square goofs

When the blues come

When I’m feelin’ bad

I simply remember my favorite things

And then I don’t feel so bad”

It is worth noting that this version of the song was recorded only two years after the debut of the original Broadway production of The Sound of Music, and four years before the release of the film.  I can’t verify the date at which when the lawyers were called in, but perhaps that was some time after the success of the movie?  I think that we should be told. 

 Meanwhile, the closing track, Sammy Fain Irving Kahal’s I’ll Be Seeing You was similarly embellished.

“I’ll be seeing you

In all the familiar faces

Of the horses at the races

All year through

In that damp café

The parking lot across the way

That beat up carousel

Where we used to sell cheap Muscatel

Well I’ll be seeing you

In all them mouldy pizza pies

In every pair of bloodshot eyes

And even if Ma Perkins dies

I’ll see you in the line-up dear

And when they point at you

I’ll be looking at my shoe

But I’ll be seeing you

Much later for you baby!”

 The LP was withdrawn and reissued with an edited version of My Favorite Things and without I’ll Be Seeing You.  In the 1980s, Milestone records reissued the LP with both versions of Favorite Things and I’ll be seeing you restored to its rightful place. 

This 13-track version of the LP, thanks once again to the lawyers, had a very short shelf life and is now extremely hard to come by.  As far as I can tell, none of the compact disc editions have included the two contentious songs.  In 2008, Concord records (owners of the Fantasy/Riverside back catalogue) issued a download-only version 15-track of the album that included four extra songs – A & B sides of two singles that were released the following year – Why Don’t You Do Right?/Fly Me To The Moon & Come & Get Me/Love.  None of these four songs (however collectible) are essential to the content of the original album; they sound totally out-of-place.

Keepnews version is on Spotify and iTunes, it sounds great. There’s no excuse not to stream or pay to download this record. Genuine CDs (on the Original Jazz Classics label) are now not so easy to come by.  But Rah is now technically out of copyright and phony versions of the album are cropping up all over the internet.  

Versions on labels such as Disconforme, Fresh Sound, American Jazz Classics, President, Universe Remasterings, All Time Records (and numerous others) are unlicensed bootlegs.  Buyer, most definitely, beware.

Here are the two offending songs.  These have been ripped from a mint Japanese copy of the 1980s reissue of the Rah album on the Milestone label. You can’t buy this music – have it on me.

Tracks

8. My Favorite Things

12. I’ll Be Seeing You

Riverside RLP 9395 (1961)

Download here