Murphy Henry
Murphy Henry,
co-founder with her husband Red of The Murphy Method, teaches banjo,
guitar, mandolin, and ukulele. She's been teaching almost as long as she
has been playing. Murphy grew up singing in church and taking piano
lessons. She learned how to play guitar during the folk boom and quickly
taught her sisters to play so that she'd have someone to play with.
In
college (University of Georgia) she played at coffeehouses with just her
guitar until, on the recommendation of Florida folksinger Gamble Rogers,
she went to her first bluegrass festival and decided that she wanted to
play bluegrass.
She learned how to play bass so that she could take a job
with Betty Fisher and the Dixie Bluegrass Band. But she quickly realized
that the bass player doesn't get nearly the attention that the banjo
player does, so she settled on the banjo as the instrument for her. She
met future-husband Red at a bluegrass festival and not long after she
graduated from UGA (with a degree in food science--of all things!) they
married and started their own band--Red and Murphy and Co.
Based in Gainesville, FL from the mid-seventies until
1986, Red and Murphy played on the southeastern festival circuit, as well
as at a lot of Florida bars and clubs. They produced seven albums and two
children. Murphy taught banjo in Gainesville and when they traveled fans
often lamented that they were not close enough to Murphy to take lessons
in person.
She had the idea of putting her lessons on cassette, so that
folks far away could learn the same way her live students did. What
started out as a modest six-cassette Beginners Banjo Series slowly grew to
a forty-plus video, six instrument instructional method.
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