Matt (Guitar) Murphy performs during the official Blues Brothers Revue at the Rialto Theater on March 5, 2012 in Joliet, Ill.Daniel Boczarski/GETTY IMAGES
Matt (Guitar) Murphy, a masterful bluesman who played with Howlin’ Wolf, Etta James, Chuck Berry and Memphis Slim, but was best known as a member of the Blues Brothers band, died on Friday in Miami. He was 88.
The cause was a heart attack, his wife, Kathy Hemrick, said.
Mr. Murphy began his career in Memphis, Tenn., before moving in the 1950s to Chicago, which was then at the epicentre of a new kind of hard-driving, heavily electrified blues. Mr. Murphy’s harmonically sophisticated, jazz-inflected guitar playing established him as a mainstay of the Chicago scene and a true original.
Reviewing a 1982 performance at which Mr. Murphy played mostly other musicians’ songs, Rafael Alvarez of The Baltimore Sun wrote, “The blunt affection for the wide, wide range of musical styles Murphy offers will make you forget the original discs.”
Mr. Murphy’s singular talent came to the attention of John Belushi and Paul Shaffer in 1978, as they searched for musicians for the band that Mr. Belushi and Dan Aykroyd, both stars of Saturday Night Live at the time, planned to take on tour as the Blues Brothers. They asked the songwriter Doc Pomus for help.
“[Doc Pomus] was known as a guru figure,” Mr. Shaffer said in a phone interview, recalling a visit he and Mr. Belushi paid to him at a music club in Greenwich Village. “We explained our project and he said, ‘You need Matt Murphy.’ ”
So they hired him.
(Murphy told a different story: that Mr. Belushi and Mr. Aykroyd spotted him while he was playing at another Manhattan club.)
The band recorded the album Briefcase Full of Blues at the Universal Amphitheater in Los Angeles in 1978. They subsequently appeared on SNL, went on tour – and made a movie.
The hit 1980 film The Blues Brothers, directed by John Landis, told the fictionalized story of Jake and Elwood Blues and their quest to get their band back together. In the film, Mr. Murphy’s eponymous character owns a restaurant with his wife, played by Aretha Franklin, who angrily warns him not to leave for the road by singing her 1968 hit Think. But Mr. Murphy removes his apron, picks up his guitar and tells the brothers, “Let’s boogie.”
Mr. Murphy continued to perform with the band and appeared in the sequel Blues Brothers 2000.
Matthew Tyler Murphy was born on Dec. 28, 1929, in Sunflower, Miss., to Daniel and Lizzie Murphy. His mother died when he was a child and he and his siblings moved to Memphis, Tenn., where his father was a hotel porter.
Mr. Murphy nurtured his love of the guitar by listening to records by T-Bone Walker, Blind Boy Fuller and others. His other musical influences included the jazz saxophonists Stan Getz and John Coltrane.
In Memphis, he played with Howlin’ Wolf, the blues pianist and singer Memphis Slim. However, he soon left for the more fertile musical turf of Chicago. He became a staff guitarist at Chess Records with the help of the bassist Willie Dixon, which led to many years of session work. Mr. Murphy recorded with Chuck Berry and Muddy Waters.
In 1963, Murphy electrified European audiences with his performance of “Matt’s Guitar Boogie,” backed by Dixon, Memphis Slim and the drummer Billy Stepney, on the American Folk Blues Festival tour.
In the early 1970s, Mr. Murphy joined the harmonica player James Cotton’s band. The group’s 1974 album, 100 Percent Cotton, included two songs written by Mr. Murphy.
Mr. Murphy formed his own band in the 1980s, and recorded three albums as a leader between 1990 and 2000. One of his sidemen on the 1990 album Way Down South was his brother Floyd, also an accomplished guitarist.
Mr. Murphy had a small stroke in 2001, and a more severe one a year or so later. He underwent extensive physical therapy and retired, but he resumed performing at the 2010 Chicago Blues Festival.
In addition to his wife, he leaves two sons.