Billy Murray (singer)

Life and career

Billy Murray was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to Patrick and Julia (Kelleher) Murray, immigrants from County Kerry, Ireland. His parents moved to Denver, Colorado, in 1882, where he grew up. He became fascinated with the theater and joined a traveling vaudeville troupe in 1893. He also performed in minstrel shows early in his career. In 1897 Murray made his first recordings for Peter Bacigalupi, the owner of a phonograph company in San Francisco. As of 2010 none of Murray's Bacigalupi cylinder records are known to have survived. In 1903 he started recording regularly in the New York City and New Jersey area, when the nation's major record companies as well as the Tin Pan Alley music industry were concentrated there.

In 1906 he recorded the first of his popular duets with Ada Jones. He also performed with Aileen Stanley, the Haydn Quartet, the American Quartet (also known as the Premier Quartet), and Elsie Baker, in addition to his solo work.

Nicknamed "The Denver Nightingale", Murray had a strong tenor voice with excellent enunciation and a more conversational delivery than common with bel canto singers of the era. On comic songs he often deliberately sang slightly flat, which he felt helped the comic effect. Although he often performed romantic numbers and ballads which sold well, his comedy and novelty song recordings continue to be popular with later generations of record collectors. His "Don't Bring Lulu", with music and lyrics by Lew Brown, Billy Rose and Ray Henderson, made No 5 in the Billboard Chart in August 1925 and remained on the chart for four weeks. The song was later covered in 1958 by The Andrews Sisters and was sung, by Dorothy Provine, in the 1961 television series The Roaring Twenties.

Murray was a devoted baseball fan, and he is said to have played with the New York Highlanders (Yankees) in exhibition games. He also supposedly sometimes called in sick to recording sessions in order to go to the ballpark. Murray recorded "Tessie, You Are the Only, Only, Only", which became the unofficial theme of the 1903 World Series, when the words were changed from "Tessie, you know I love you madly," to "Honus, why do you hit so badly?"

Murray's popularity faded as public taste changed and recording technology advanced; the rise of the electric microphone in the mid-1920s coincided with the era of the crooners. His "hammering" style, as he called it, essentially yelling the song into an acoustic recording horn, did not work in the electrical era, and he had to learn to soften his voice.

Though his singing style was less in demand, he continued to find recording work. By the late 1920s and early 1930s, the music from his early days was considered nostalgic (the modern term would be "oldies") and Murray was in demand again. He did voices for animated cartoons, especially the popular "follow the bouncing ball" sing-along cartoons and the Fleischer Studios character Bimbo. He also did radio work. In 1929, Murray and Walter Scanlon provided the voices for the Fleischer short animation film Finding His Voice, produced by Western Electric.

Murray made his last recordings for Beacon Records on February 11, 1943 with Jewish dialect comedian Monroe Silver. He retired the next year to Freeport, Long Island, New York, because of heart problems. He died at nearby Jones Beach of a heart attack in 1954 at the age of 77. Murray had married three times, the first two ending in divorce. He was survived by his third wife, Madeleine, and is buried in the Cemetery of the Holy Rood in Westbury, New York.

Partial song discography

Murray recorded hundreds of songs: solos, duets, quartets and other musical groupings. This list is confined primarily to songs which also have separate Wikipedia articles: