小简介
Michael Martin Murphey1945年3月14日出生在Texas的Oak Cliff，并在DALLAS长大。他从小就对牛仔故事和歌曲特别着迷——尤其是Mark Twain 和William Faulkner的作品。他还尝试着自己写诗。在60年代早期，他初中时就开始在DALLAS附近的酒吧表演，综合了乡村，民谣和摇滚。尽管听众都有着固有的保守性格，可MURTHEY还是成功了。随即他组建了一只乐队并在DALLLAS地区有着一批不错的追随者。
Swans Against the Sun这张专辑帮MURTHEY取得了更大的成功，这其中包括了他第一首乡村打帮歌"A Mansion on the Hill"和同年（1976）的 "Flowing Free Forever,"另外。这张专辑里的"Cherokee Fiddle,"也是MURTHEY一首成功的单曲。6年后JOHNNY LEE把他带进了TOP 10和电影都市牛郎，并让乡村音乐在美国乃至许多其他国家风靡一时。到了1981年，他已经被人熟知为MICHAEL MURPHEY，从那年开始他开始不断在电影里露面从Gus Trikonis'的影片 Take This Job and Shove It,开始，他在电影或者专集里加上他的中名，以跟演员MARTIN MURTHY区别开来。
1982年，MURTHEY跟LIBERTY RECORDS签约，并出了2张原创专集“ Michael Martin Murphey”和“ The Heart Never Lies”, 不但重新录制了他在A&M 和 Epic 的打榜歌，并且推出了加盟LIBERTY后的原创歌曲"Still Taking Chances," "Love Affairs," "Don't Count the Rainy Days," "Will It Be Love," 和 "Radio Land,"
后者受美国人喜爱的程度不亚于“美国派”美国乡村音乐协会" The American Country Music Association提名他为1983年的年度最佳新人男歌手 他重新录制的"Carolina in the Pines" 冲进乡村榜Top 10 in
1985,甚至超过了原始的Epic版本.
尽管他现在主要精力在牛仔音乐，他仍旧会组织一系列叫WEST FEST的年度庆典。2005年，他发行了一张关于现在大牧场生活的合集，叫做Storm Over the Rangelands.
In many ways, Michael Martin Murphey has the career that Michael Nesmith of the Monkees — with whom Murphey performed early in both of their careers — mightve had if hed never been picked for the NBC series. A guitarist/songwriter, 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. 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.
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, 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, 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 Murpheys What Am I Doing Hangin Round?
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 Murphey his best showcase as a songwriter, however, by cutting an entire album, The Ballad of Calico, comprised of songs 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, Geronimos 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, 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 Murpheys 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 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 Murpheys 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 Murphey, but six years later Johnny Lee brought it into the Top Ten and into the movie Urban Cowboy. Up until 1981, hed 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, 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, Dont 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 hed 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, 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. Murpheys 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 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 Murpheys other Warner Bros. releases. That success, in turn, led the label to establish its Warner Western imprint, which, in addition to Murphey (who also produces a lot of the work), has also recorded the harmony group the Sons of the San Joachin, veteran singing cowboy Herb Jeffries, and poet Waddie Mitchell.
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 Coles Unforgettable duet with her own father — using a voice track recorded by Robbins in 1960 — on the song Big Iron. In 1996, 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.