Few artists, in any genre of music, have had a career like Anne Murray. Her album, This Way Is My Way, was released in 1969 on Capitol Records, marking the beginning of a career that lasted four decades. Not only did Murray have longevity, but she also found success in both her native Canada and the United States, with hit after hit on both country and pop charts.
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When Murray bid goodbye, after Anne Murray’s Christmas album (2008), she knew it was time.
“I was so relieved,” Murray, now 80, tells American Songwriter. “I had done it for 40 years. I was so tired, and I just wanted some time for myself. I wanted to get to know my kids again and just be mom, and even by that time, a grandmother.”
After spending most of her adult life as a performer, Murray knew it was time to walk away, adding that she never once regretted the decision.
“People ask me if I miss performing. No, I don’t,” Murray says matter-of-factly. “I did a lot of it. I don’t miss performing. Do you know what I miss? I miss my road family. Because we were a family, and not just my band, but my crew. Everybody, we were a family. We did things together. We planned nights off together. I ate with my crew and my band every single night on the road. And we planned Euchre (card game) nights with everybody: bus drivers, truck drivers. Everybody was involved. And it was really a cohesive group. It was a wonderful thing.”
Murray had no idea when “Snowbird,” released in 1970, became her first No. 1 hit, that it would become such a pivotal song for her. Written by Gene MacLellan, “Snowbird’ was the first of many successful singles for Murray.
“I loved it,” Murray recalls of hearing the song for the first time. “Out of the blue, here was a guy who was writing songs. He showed up as a guest on the same TV show that I was on, in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and he handed me these songs. He said, ‘Well, here, I have some songs here if you’re interested.’ I heard ‘Snowbird’ and I went, ‘Interested?’ I had only sung other people’s songs up until this time, and I had never heard an original song. And his was original. Not only was it original, but it was good.”
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“Snowbird” not only became a massive hit for Murray, but it also paved the way for even more hits for her, written by MacLellan. “He gave me another song called ‘Just Bidin’ My Time,’ which was the B side of ‘Snowbird,’” Murray says. “And then he wrote ‘Put Your Hand in the Hand.’ And he wrote a whole bunch of great songs.”
That same TV show was favorable for Murray, and not just because it introduced her to MacLellan, but she also met Brian Ahern, who was the Musical Director for the show Murray was appearing on. Ahern went on to produce Murray’s first ten albums.
“Snowbird” kicked off a string of hits for Murray, including “A Stranger in My Place,” “Danny’s Song,” “A Love Song,” and more. But even Murray admits she felt a shift in her career when she released “You Needed Me.” Released in 1978 on Murray’s Let’s Keep It That Way album, it’s the song that she now says changed everything for her.
“That’s a great song,” Murray says with a smile. Written by Randy Goodrum, Murray now reveals that she came precariously close to letting the song get away,
“It was in a box,” she remembers. “I was listening to a lot of songs, and it ended up in a box that said, ‘listen to again,’ a small box. And so, when I started listening again to these few songs that I had put aside, I had to sit down when I heard them. How could I have so casually set that aside? I had probably listened to 200 songs already, and so I listened to it and then put it aside, thinking, ‘Well, that’s possible.’ When I listened, I went, ‘Oh my God.’ I tucked it under my arm, and I put a hold on this song. I couldn’t believe my good fortune.”
Murray’s good fortune continued in the studio, when she says true magic happened, something that occurs rarely when recording a song.
“When we got a take of it, every musician felt it,” Murray recounts.”They just went, ‘Wow. What did we just do?’ That doesn’t happen often, I can tell you, in the studio, where everybody feels it.”
By the time Murray had released another of her big hits, “Could I Have This Dance” in 1980, she was working with producer Jim Ed Norman. It’s Norman who brought Murray the song for the 1980 film Urban Cowboy, starring John Travolta and Debra Winger.
“He said they were looking for artists to do various songs, and asked if I would be interested in recording ‘Could I Have This Dance,’” Murray shares. “I went, ‘It’s a 3/4 waltz. Why would Inotdo it?’ And so we did it for the soundtrack of Urban Cowboy.’
Murray liked “Could I Have This Dance” so much that she also included it on her own Anne Murray’s Greatest Hits record, also released in 1980. Unlike a lot of artists, Murray was content to sing other people’s songs. Arguably one of the best song interpreters of all time, Murray built a career on taking songs written by other people, sometimes even recorded by other people, and still making them her own.
“I never had a problem finding songs for some reason,” Murray says. “I don’t know why. Gene McClellan fell into my lap, and ‘Put Your Hand in the Hand’ was supposed to be the follow-up to ‘Snowbird.’ The record company said it didn’t sound enough like ‘Snowbird’ to be a follow-up. I thought they must know what they were doing. And then, of course, [Canadian band] Ocean grabbed it.
“It was a number one record,” she adds with a chuckle. “I was so mad at them. I moved on to ‘Danny’s Song,’ and I was lucky. I then had ‘Love Song,’ which was another Kenny Loggins song, ‘You Won’t See Me,’ and ‘He Thinks I Still Care.’ I mean, I could have been singing the phone book then. It was just one of those things where you get on a roll. I always said that about Kenny Rogers that he could sing the phone book, and it would sell too, but it just seemed to me one after another. I was very fortunate to have great songwriters. Charlie Black, Rory Bourke, and those guys for whom I did a pile of their songs. They just kept sending them.”
In addition to having decades of hits and chart-topping, multi-genre singles in both the United States and Canada, Murray also won numerous awards, including four Grammys, an ACM Award, and 3 CMA Awards, becoming the first female to win a CMA Award for Album of the Year, which she did in 1984 for A Little Good News. Murray is also the first Canadian female artist to have a No. 1 hit in the United States. But all of that pales in significance to what Murray says is her greatest triumph: becoming a mother. Murray is a proud parent of son, William Langstroth, and daughter, Dawn Langstroth. For Murray, her children will always be her proudest accomplishment, although Murray admits their younger years were also an incredibly challenging season.
“It kind of happened when I started having babies,” Murray says, when asked if she had a moment that made her feel like she had arrived. “I’m going, ‘How am I gonna do this and have children?’ And oh boy, I was right. It was not easy. It was tough going because I got pregnant with my daughter when ‘I Just Fall in Love Again’ was No. 1 on the country charts. ‘I Just Fall in Love Again’ was probably the least sounding country song that I have ever sung, and it was on the chart at No. 1, longer than any other song I ever had. So there was no rhyme or reason to it. I was pregnant with my daughter at the very height of my career. It was a very difficult time for me because I was so torn, and I had to leave a baby.
“I wouldn’t have, but she had ear problems, all kinds of problems. And it was a nightmare,” she adds, her voice quiet. “I hate going back there, because it’s very hard.”
Murray may have retired, but her music lives on. She just released a new set of tunes, Here You Are. The record, her 33rd, reached No. 1 on the Canadian Country chart and No. 8 on the Country chart in the United States. Here You Areis comprised of 11 new songs, recorded between 1978 and 1996. The songs were all found by a fan, one Murray says was determined to discover the unreleased tracks.
“Talk about another surprise,” Murray says with a laugh. “This thing kind of came out of the woodwork. I had totally forgotten about these songs. And this fan who was—I mean, talk about a fan, He is a real fan. He was relentless in his search for these songs, and he knew about them because I had put all of my archival material in the University of Toronto. In that archival material, there were cassette tapes of outtakes of songs that I recorded. I used to take them home at the end of the recording session every day. There were a bunch of them. And he said, ‘Well, I’ve never heard this song before, so it must be somewhere.’”
When Murray’s former label, Capitol Records, folded, all of its archived material was given to the University of Calgary. The fan, who lives in Las Vegas, made multiple trips to Calgary until he had all of the unreleased songs. Murray admits she didn’t have much faith in the project until she heard the end result. By her own admission, she was stunned by how well Here You Are turned out.
“I thought, ‘Well, if they didn’t make it in the first place, why would I want them now?’ You could have knocked me over with a feather,” Murray says. “I heard these songs, and I was shocked at how some of them could miss the cut. Every one of these songs. I mean, they’re all good songs. I went, ‘Wow.’ But there are always reasons; when you’re doing an album, there’s a certain feel they’re looking for with an album, and you’re looking for with an album. Maybe this didn’t fit that particular album, or this, that, and the other thing. But these are good songs that should have made the cut, in my opinion.”
Here You Are may have been a big surprise, but so was her recent Grand Ole Opry tribute show, The Music of My Life: An All-Star Tribute to Anne Murray. Artists like Trisha Yearwood, Collin Raye, Lorrie Morgan, Martina McBride, Kathy Mattea, Shenandoah, and more all showed up to perform some of Murray’s biggest hits. For one who tends to deflect praise, Murray admits she was touched by the show.
“I didn’t know if it would come to be,” Murray says. “All it’s been was, ‘We want to put this tribute concert together,’ and so on. And I thought, ‘Well, okay, fine.’ But I didn’t know that it was actually gonna happen… I’ve been retired for 17 years, so it never occurred to me that something like this might happen.”
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