Murphy Hicks Henry is well known in the bluegrass community for her banjo playing, her Murphy Method by-ear teaching videos, her book Pretty Good for a Girl: Women in Bluegrass (University of Illinois Press), her long-running General Store column in Bluegrass Unlimited magazine and, in earlier years, her lively performing with the band Red and Murphy & Co. It was while playing with Red and Murphy & Co. that Murphy honed her considerable skills as a songwriter. Recently, for her 70th birthday, her son Christopher totally surprised her by masterminding and producing When My Momma Sang to Me: Songs of Murphy Hicks Henry, a CD which features over 30 well-known women in bluegrass playing and singing 23 of Murphy’s original compositions. The project includes early songs like “Riding Around on Saturday Night” and “Grandmother’s Song” as well as later songs like “All of Us Used To Be Skinny” and “Save Me A Square On The Floor.” In between are solid favorites like “Fried Chicken,” “M and M Blues,” and “I Ain’t Domesticated Yet.” Helping out on this project (and keeping totally mum!) were Rhonda Vincent, Alice Gerrard, AJ Lee, Kristin Scott Benson, Gina Furtado, Cathy Fink, Marcie Marxer, Laura Orshaw, Bronwyn Keith-Hynes, the Price Sisters, daughter Casey Henry, and a host of other women including Murphy’s sisters.
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