Ralph J Murphy
About the author
About Ralph
Bio by One of Ralph Murphy's co-writers - Pat Alger - (Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame)
As I approach almost 3 decades of calling Nashville, Tennessee my home, I was trying to remember a time when I didn't know the man called Ralph Murphy, yet I can't recall exactly how we met. He can be sipping a beer at the next stool one moment and then off to France the next - he has more passports than an international spy and travels more miles than the Secretary Of State - all on behalf of that special species of mankind, The Songwriter. Ralph has done so much work on behalf of songwriters, it has been easy to forget sometimes that he is one, and a fine one at that.
Allow me to update you on the facts. Ralph was born in London, England in 1944 (talk about long ago and far away) but spent his youth in the frozen north of Wallaceburg, Ontario, growing tall and taking care of his Mum. In 1965 he moved back to the center of the Pop Music Universe - London - where he had his first hit in 1966 with Call My Name by James Royal which he followed up with Beyond The Shadow Of A Doubt by the legendary Billy Fury. Hits with The Casuals and Vanity Fair came next and he formed several groups including the Slade Brothers and Harper and Rowe and began producing records for acts too numerous to mention. By 1969 he was on a plane to New York City where he produced 2 Platinum albums for the group April Wine, signed a deal as a solo artist, recorded with Roadhouse, owned 2 record labels and produced albums for record labels in NYC and London - no wonder he was so skinny.
The part of the story that amazes me though, is that in 1972 Ralph "accidentally" had a country hit as a writer with the hotter than hot Harper Valley PTA girl Jeannie C. Reilly called Good Enough To Be Your Wife. I guarantee you every writer in Nashville was trying to get a Jeannie C. Reilly cut but Ralph just fell in to it from NEW YORK CITY!
It was a big enough hit to win an award and when Ralph came down to receive it he fell in love with Nashville. In 1974 he returned to record his solo album There's A Star Born Every Minute for GRT Records and in 1976 Ralph came back for good.
With his good and talented friend, the future Hall of Famer Roger Cook, Ralph started Pic-A-Lic, an independent publishing company that would become part of the legend of Music Row. Along the way, Ralph had a Number 1 hit on Crystal Gayle with Half The Way and He Got You was a big one for Ronnie Milsap. Cuts by Don Williams, Ray Price, Shania Twain and Kathy Mattea followed and in 2006 he had a big holiday hit in England with Cliff Richard. Yet, if you wanted to hear this guy named Ralph sing one of those tunes, you had to be at the Bluebird, Douglas Corner, or some other writer's venue on the occasional night when he was in town and was caught singing.
The good news is that Ralph has gone into the studio for the first time in a long while (33 years by my count) and recorded heartfelt acoustic versions of many of his best songs, accompanied by several of his running buddies such as Jack Clement, James Dean Hicks and yours truly. The results are wonderful.
Any fan of Ralph's will love this record and I am proud to have written several of these songs with him. So next time you are at the Bluebird or some other joint and you hear one of these tunes being sung by a tall international man of mystery and your date whispers "who is that singing?" tell them "it's just a guy named Ralph" - and a fine one at that.
And now comes what all songwriters have been waiting for: THE BOOK. Ralph has been writing a column on songwriting for years and has at last edited and collected these valuable resources into one book. I'll let Ralph pick up the story from here.
Ralph Murphy- About the book!
This book represents a voyage of discovery. As a child, watching the joy/solace/comfort/pure pleasure people took in singing songs, I wanted to write the words and music that became "their song." I wanted to hear those songs sung in the clubs, on the street, in the car, and in grocery stores. I wanted people dancing, falling in love, falling out of love, skating, or doing dishes to them. In other words, I wanted "hits." Not just hits but big hits...hits that would last.
Ralph
