Michael Martin Murphey appears on Mountain Stage, recorded live at the Culture Center Theater in Charleston, W.Va.
"It's hard for me to describe how important he is," host Larry Groce says, "because in my life, he was extremely important." Murphey was the eldest of a group of successful musicians to emerge from the same Dallas high school — including Ray Wylie Hubbard, B.W. Stevenson and Groce himself — all of whom looked up to Murphey.
A proud representative of the "western" part of the beautifully worn country-western genre, Murphey became known in the '70s for his "cosmic cowboy" persona. He's earned multiple Grammy nominations, five songs that sold more than a million copies, and six gold albums. In the 1990s, Murphey's Cowboy Songs became the first album of cowboy music to achieve gold status since Marty Robbins' Gunfighter Ballads and Trail Songs in 1959.
Murphey's newest album, Red River Drifter, draws from influences ranging from classical to country, from blues to bluegrass. Murphey is backed here by Gary Roller on bass and Shaun Richardson on guitar, mandolin and fiddle. Mountain Stage band member Bob Thompson joins them to re-create the piano part from Murphey's biggest hit, "Wildfire."
Set List
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