 In many ways,
Michael Martin Murphey has the career that
Michael Nesmith of
the Monkees -- with whom
Michael Martin Murphey performed early in both of their careers -- might've had if he'd
never been picked for the NBC series. A guitarist/songwriter,
Michael Martin Murphey led the country-rock group
the Lewis & Clarke Expedition in the mid-to-late '60s and had some pop
success, and even got one song, "What Am I Doing Hangin' 'Round?," recorded by
the Monkees (with
Nesmith singing lead, natch). His songs were cut by the likes of
Flatt & Scruggs,
Kenny Rogers,
Roger Miller, and
Bobbie Gentry, and he eventually began recording for A&M Records, and later
for Epic Records, where he enjoyed a huge pop hit in the 1970s with "Wildfire."
For a time he was known as the Cosmic Cowboy after one of his early songs.
Michael Martin Murphey moved to Liberty Records in the early '80s and later jumped to
Warner Bros., where his interest in cowboy and Native American subjects led to
the foundation of the Warner Western imprint, a subsidiary label devoted to
cowboy music and poetry.
Michael Martin Murphey was born in Dallas, TX, and quickly took to playing the ukulele. He
had a special love for cowboy stories and songs and also read avidly as a boy --
especially the work of Mark Twain and William Faulkner -- and was writing poetry
before he was in his teens. He began performing as an amateur while in junior
high school and within a few years was playing the clubs around Dallas in the
early '60s, combining country, folk, and rock music. Somehow, despite the
inherently conservative nature of all of those audiences,
Michael Martin Murphey made it work, and he formed a band with a decent following in the
area around Dallas. He studied poetry and writing at the University of
California, and soon after arriving in the Golden State he was signed up as a
songwriter with Sparrow Music. By 1964, he was a popular figure in the folk
clubs around Los Angeles and had formed up with three like-minded musicians,
Nesmith, John London, and John Raines, under the name
the Trinity River Boys, who recorded one never-to-be-released album before
disbanding.
In 1967,
Michael Martin Murphey formed
the Lewis & Clarke Expedition with
Owen Castleman (aka Boomer Clarke). This group recorded one self-titled
album for the Colgems label -- not coincidentally, the label for which
the Monkees, of whom
Nesmith was a member, recorded -- and got a moderate hit out of the single
"I Feel Good (I Feel Bad)." It was around this time that
the Monkees recorded
Michael Martin Murphey's "What Am I Doing Hangin' 'Round?"
Michael Martin Murphey left Los Angeles in 1968 to take up residence in the San Gabriel
Mountains, where his songwriting blossomed anew. He was signed to Screen Gems
(the publishing arm of Columbia Pictures, which also owned Colgems) as a
songwriter, and with the exposure that he received from this association, both
songs recorded by
Flatt & Scruggs and
Bobbie Gentry. It was
Kenny Rogers who gave
Michael Martin Murphey his best showcase as a songwriter, however, by cutting an entire
album, The Ballad of Calico, comprised of songs
Michael Martin Murphey had written about a Mojave Desert ghost town.
Back in Texas, in the Austin area, during the early '70s, he resumed his
singer/songwriter career and fell in with
Jerry Jeff Walker,
Willie Nelson, and
B.W. Stevenson. He also put together a new band that specialized in
country-rock and folk-rock. In 1971, he was signed to his first solo recording
contract on A&M Records, and his first album, Geronimo's Cadillac (1972),
yielded a modest hit in the title song, which was covered by several other
artists, including
Hoyt Axton, and also taken up as an anthem by Native American civil rights
activists. A second album, Cosmic Cowboy Souvenir, was well received critically
and also a modest hit in the Austin area.
In 1974,
Michael Martin Murphey moved to Epic Records, a division of Columbia, and recorded the
first of six albums, Michael Murphey, that same year. It was his second album,
Blue Sky - Night Thunder, recorded in 1975, however, that marked
Michael Martin Murphey's commercial breakthrough. He had first heard the story about a
ghost horse rescuing people on the desert when he was a boy, from his
grandfather, and
Michael Martin Murphey dreamed of something similar one night as an adult and set it down
to music and words in half an hour that same evening. The resulting song,
"Wildfire," got to number three on the pop charts in 1975 and became
Michael Martin Murphey's first gold record. Another song off of the same album, "Carolina
in the Pines," also made the Top 30.
He saw more success with Swans Against the Sun -- which included his first
country chart hit, "A Mansion on the Hill" and "Flowing Free Forever," both in
1976. "Cherokee Fiddle" off of that album was a modestly successful single for
Michael Martin Murphey, but six years later
Johnny Lee brought it into the Top Ten and into the movie Urban Cowboy. Up
until 1981, he'd been known as
Michael Murphey, but that year he began making a series of film acting
appearances, starting with
Gus Trikonis' Take This Job and Shove It, and began using his middle name in
films and on albums, as a way of distinguishing himself from the actor
Michael Murphy (Manhattan).
In 1982,
Michael Martin Murphey signed a recording contract with Liberty Records, which yielded two
original albums, Michael Martin Murphey and The Heart Never Lies, as well as a
best-of -- made up of superb re-recordings of his A&M and Epic hits as well as
his original Liberty hits "Still Taking Chances," "Love Affairs," "Don't Count
the Rainy Days," "Will It Be Love," and "Radio Land," the latter a sort of
country-flavored equivalent to "American Pie." By that time he'd been voted Best
New Male Vocalist of the year 1983 by the American Country Music Association.
Additionally, his re-recording of "Carolina in the Pines" rose to the country
Top Ten in 1985, outperforming the original Epic version.
In 1985,
Michael Martin Murphey moved to Warner Bros. records, making his debut on the label with
Tonight We Ride. A year later he got to the country Top Five with "A Face in the
Crowd," recorded with
Holly Dunn, and then reached the number one spot with "A Long Line of Love."
Michael Martin Murphey's singles chart success slackened off after 1989 with "Never Givin'
Up on Love," which had been used in the
Clint Eastwood film Pink Cadillac that same year.
It was after this that
Michael Martin Murphey returned to one of the first loves of his life, cowboy music. In
1990, he cut an album, Cowboy Songs, made up of traditional and well-known
popular songs from the genre, including "The Yellow Rose of Texas" and "Tumbling
Tumbleweeds." That record uncovered a niche waiting to be filled, selling
several times more than any of
Michael Martin Murphey's other Warner Bros. releases. That success, in turn, led the label
to establish its Warner Western imprint, which, in addition to
Michael Martin Murphey (who also produces a lot of the work), has also recorded the harmony
group
the Sons of the San Joaquin, veteran singing cowboy
Herb Jeffries, and poet
Waddie Mitchell.
Michael Martin Murphey has since recorded two subsequent albums of Western songs. Cowboy
Songs III (1993) features a duet with the late
Marty Robbins, no doubt inspired by the success of
Natalie Cole's "Unforgettable" duet with her own father -- using a voice
track recorded by
Robbins in 1960 -- on the song "Big Iron." In 1996,
Michael Martin Murphey released a live album on which he is backed by a full orchestra. He
has also organized a series of annual celebrations of the American West, called
West Fest, which he stages in various western states. Cowboy Songs 4 appeared in
1998 and several collections followed. In summer 2002, his storytelling
continued on Cowboy Classics: Playing Favorites II. ~ Bruce Eder, All Music
Guide
Contact Grabow for more information or to book
Michael Martin Murphey for your next corporate or private event.
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