Songoftheday 7/27/12 - I've been looking at people, & how they change with the times...

Michael Martin Murphey - "What's Forever For"

from the album Michael Martin Murphey (1982)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #19 (five weeks)

Weeks in the top-40: 11

Today's Song of the Day is by the current king of Cowboy Country, Michael Martin Murphey. Murphey started out as a folk singer, in a group with future Monkee Michael Nesmith. By the end of the decade, he found himself writing songs for both pop artists like the Monkees as well as country singers like Bobbie Gentry and Kenny Rogers, the latter of whom would record an album of all covers of Murphey songs, The Ballad Of Calico with the First Edition in 1972.

That same year, Murphey released his first album, Geromino's Cadillac, which was an 'outlaw country' classic and gave the singer his first top-40 hit on the pop chart with the Native-American supporting title track. Three years later, on his fourth album Blue Sky - Night Thunder, he had his biggest pop hit ever with the epic "Wildfire". That song was a #3 pop hit, and topped the adult-contemporary (soft-rock) chart in 1975.

As disco ruled the late 70's, Murphey's music started getting more play on country stations than pop, but in 1982, when country artists like Kenny Rogers and Ronnie Milsap were welcomed on mainstream radio, Michael released his self-titled 1982 album, which was his first on the Liberty Records label (coincidently Rogers' same label). The first single released from the album was the ballad "What's Forever For", a maudlin little number about a romance...

The song topped the country charts, and made the top-5 on the soft-rock chart. The album also was a top-20 seller on the country-exclusive list, and #69 on the main albums chart. "What's Forever For" would also be Murphey's last pop top-40, though he would be a consistent hitmaker on the country chart through the 80's, with a dozen top-10 hits and one charttopper with "A Long Line of Love" in 1987.

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Oddly, for one of his biggest hits, it was one he didn't write himself. It was composed by Rafe VanHoy, and recorded by the soft-rock duo England Dan & John Ford Coley on their Dr. Heckyl and Mr. Jive album...

Pop/Country singer Anne Murray covered the song two years before Murphey..

and Billy Gilman sang it on his One Voice album in 2000...

Up tomorrow: a former Runaway covers some Glitter.