Mays had previously worked with a diverse group of singers including Sarah Vaughan, Barry Manilow, Marlena Shaw, Maxine Weldon, Jaye P. Morgan, Andy Williams, Leonard Cohen, Larry Gatlin, Dionne Warwick, and The Manhattan Transfer, and would go on to work with many more including Frank Sinatra, Anita O'Day and Al Jarreau.

[3] Murphy is assisted by a quintet that includes keyboardist Bill Mays, trumpeter Brian Lynch and violinist Lou Lausche, a friend from Cincinnati.

Murphy recites the words he wrote to Wayne Shorter's "Beauty and the Beast" before singing the song.

Other jazz compositions include Benny Golson's "Along Came Betty", Sonny Rollins's "Doxy", and W. C. Handy's "Memphis Blues".

Murphy was known throughout his career for singing infrequently heard verses, introductions and unknown stanzas from well known standards.

It is sung using only one vowel of the singer's choosing following the tradition of vocalises, a 19th-century practice of wordless technical etudes set to piano accompaniment.

[5] The Virgin Encyclopedia of Popular Music gives the album 3 stars (meaning, good, by the artist's usual standards and therefore recommended.

[7] Scott Yanow writes, "Mark Murphy takes plenty of chances on this date...A very interesting and colorful set".

[7] In his own book The Jazz Singers: The Ultimate Guide, Yanow lists the album as "one of the best individual Muse sets", and writes of Murphy, "A brilliant vocal innovator, Mark Murphy can turn a song inside out in his improvisations, jumping between falsetto and low bass notes, or he can treat a ballad with real sensitivity.