Danny Murphy

 

 

Same neighborhood.  Same age.  Same schools.  Good friends.  We spent a lot of time together.

 

We both had pigeons.  We both played acoustic guitar.  We both sang.  We even did a couple gigs together while we were still in high school.  He continued on with music.  I went a different way.  Whereas I could play the guitar, Danny could do a lot more.  He played guitar, drums, banjo, harmonica.  Who knows what else?  Maybe mandolin.  I think he could play whatever instrument he decided to pick up.  An enthusiastic entertainer.  Funny.

 

He continued on as a musician.  I don’t know that he ever had any job other than musician.  I think he mostly stayed a local guy around Long Beach, except he came to Colorado for a couple years.  In fact, one year while Judy and I were visiting family in Long Beach at Christmas he was talking about going to Colorado.  Judy and I ended up canceling our plane tickets and we all drove back to Colorado together in his VW Bus.  That was a very cold ride over the Continental Divide in winter with only a VW Bus heater to take the edge off.  (It didn’t take the edge off, by the way.)  We ended up buying a propane fueled open flame space heater and tried not to kill ourselves by burning up all the oxygen in the car trying to stay warm.

 

We’ve lost touch with Danny now though.  The closest I’ve come in the last couple decades to running into him is discovering this album for sale on Amazon Music.

 

A collector’s item, apparently.  I had that album.  I had cassette tapes of all the albums he did.  But I don’t have any of them anymore either.