Matt ‘Guitar’ Murphy (88) – blues guitar great – was born on March 15, 1931 in Sunflower, Mississippi, and was raised and educated in Memphis, Tennessee, where his father worked at the famous Peabody Hotel. Murphy learned to play guitar when he was a child. Alongside his brother Floyd Murphy, he became a fixture on the Memphis blues scene when they were teenagers.
In 1948, Murphy moved to Chicago, where he joined the Howlin’ Wolf Band, which at the time featured Little Junior Parker. In 1952, Murphy recorded with Little Junior Parker and Ike Turner, resulting in the release, “You’re My Angel”/“Bad Women, Bad Whiskey”, credited to Little Junior Parker and the Blue Flames.
Murphy worked often with blues pioneer Memphis Slim, including on his debut album At the Gate of Horn (1959). Murphy recorded two albums and many singles with Chuck Berry and was also featured in works by Koko Taylor, Sonny Boy Williamson II, Buddy Guy, Etta James, and Otis Rush. He also performed with Willie Dixon. Freddie King is said to have once admitted that he based his “Hide Away” (1960) on Murphy’s playing.
He also gave a very memorable performance in 1963 on the American Folk Blues Festival tour of Europe with his “Matt’s Guitar Boogie”.
After years of session work in the late 60s and early 70s, Murphy joined the Blues Brothers band, which was based on a Belushi-Aykroyd sketch on “Saturday Night Live.” There, Murphy played alongside noted session musicians Donald “Duck” Dunn on bass, Steve Jordan on drums, Steve Cropper on guitar and Paul Shaffer on keyboards. The Blues Brothers’ album “Briefcase Full of Blues,” released at the height of the disco era on Atlantic Records, was a surprise No. 1 Billboard hit upon its release in November 1978, with its live, revisionist blues material. Murphy was an essential element of the album’s two Top 40 singles, “Soul Man” and “Rubber Biscuit.”
He recorded solo albums Way Down South in 1990 and the Blues Don’t Bother Me in 1996. Lucky Charm was Murphy’s third solo album, first released in 2000 with Roesch. It included contributions by his fellow Blues Brothers musicians Lou Marini and Alan Rubin, credited as The Blues Brothers Horns.
In the 1970s, Murphy associated with harmonica great James Cotton, recording over six albums. Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi attended one of their performances and subsequently asked Murphy to join the touring band of The Blues Brothers. Murphy appeared in the films The Blues Brothers (1980) and Blues Brothers 2000 (1998), playing the husband of Aretha Franklin. He performed with the Blues Brothers Band until the early 2000s.
He played the soul food chef and husband to waitress Aretha Franklin. The couple spar over his desire to reunite with his ne’er-do-well pals, Jake and Elwood Blues, who are on “a mission from God” to put their Blues Brothers band back together again to raise money for a Catholic orphanage in Chicago.
Murphy was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame in 2012.
He died on June 15, 2018
