Poetry
The Lake Press, 2025
£10.00, 66 pages
ISBN: 978-1-0369-1124-9

John Murphy’s new collection deals with a surprisingly eclectic mix of mid-twentieth century music legends, American and British. Notes includes over two dozen paeans to some of the great blues, jazz and rock artists of the second half of the twentieth century. Coming from the same generation as Murphy, I found them particularly satisfying, though I grew up in America and he in the UK. Indeed, that shift in perspective makes the topic even more appealing, coming from a fresh angle.

The selection may seem haphazard – not a single Rolling Stone in the bunch – and in his introductory remarks, Murphy acknowledges there “is no solid rationale” for his choices. Indeed, the subjects of his poems were “chosen for varying personal reasons.” But that’s the best kind of rationale, isn’t it? Go to Wikipedia if you want an encyclopedic list of influential musicians and an objective account of their accomplishments. These poems are personal, the experience they capture genuine. Take the very first one, “Blossom Dearie.” Not necessarily a household name, Dearie was an American jazz singer who collaborated Miles Davis, Johnny Mercer and others. She was distinguished by her high girlish voice.  Murphy writes:

Her voice was pink
and blew rainbow

streaked bubbles
that popped

like a marshmallow
bounce on the ears.

You can hear the effect her voice had on Murphy as a post-war British teenager, “the songs and notes / coloured by that pink voice.”  

In the main, the poems are written from Murphy’s point-of-view, in his own voice, but one, “Bob Harris,” is in the voice of its subject, “Whispering Bob,” a BBC radio music host, once parodied  by Eric Idle. “My name is Bob Harris,” Murphy begins, and the poem ends spotlighting his voice: 

I hope it brings music
close to you, as close as I feel

to that universal rhythm
that moves us all.

I’m a DJ.
I’ve done my bit for music.

The radio personalities were a huge part of the popular music culture of the 1960s and throughout the rest of the century. In America, Dick Biondi at WLS in Chicago was the first American DJ to play a Beatles record on the radio. Wolfman Jack on KDAY and WNBC was another radio legend.

John Lennon, Paul McCartney (“Blackbird”) and George Martin – the “fifth Beatle” – all have poems in their honor in Notes, as do noted American musicians like Bob Dylan (“The voice grates into our ears. / The words speak a sweetness…”), Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys, Buddy Holly (“the devil’s music with three chords, / defiance and the invincibility of youth.”)  and Elvis Presley. 

What does a British kid make of the Americans? Murphy’s Jimi Hendrix poem, about his rendition of “The Star-Spangled Banner” at Woodstock, gives us a clear idea.

He leans into the notes, pushes the strings
into screaming jets, the tat tat tat of death,
whistling shells slamming into ears.
In a muddy field on a Monday morning…

Later in the poem Murphy spells it out more explicitly in reference to the “conscience of a nation”:

Jimi came a long way from Robert Johnson.
But his notes connect with injustice
through the ages, from black folks
toiling in the cotton fields to the

napalm-soaked rice fields in Asia.

In addition to the rock stars themselves, Murphy highlights people like Sam Phillips, the Memphis, Tennessee, record producer (“the man who invented / rock and roll”) who brought us Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, and Johnny Cash. There’s also a poem about Phil Spector, the record producer and songwriter who worked with everybody from the Ronettes, the Beatles and Ike and Tina Turner to Leonard Cohen, the Rolling Stones, and the Four Tops. He was later convicted of murder and died in prison. 

One musician that Murphy highlights who had escaped my attention as teenager is Cyril Davies, “one of the pioneers of British R&B,” as Murphy explains in a note, and in the poem he describes

his harp like a train full of notes,
rocking through Chicago,
calling to the best of British

blues and small club gigs,
pushing the blues into focus.

Later in the poem, Murphy writes that Davies’ mojo came from Chicago

to a small club in Ealing.
He blew through the pain.
Chicago calling to him, to close
his eyes, harp to mic
and blow the dust off the blues.

Having contracted Pleurisy the previous year, Murphy explains in his notes, Davies died in 1964, barely thirty years old.

The title of the collection obviously alludes to music, but a second section to the book contains Murphy’s notes on ten of the subjects of the poems, from Peter Green and Chuck Berry to Roy Rogers, Sam Phillips, and Robert Johnson. Murphy extols the movie, Jazz on a Summers Day, a film about the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival, in his note about Anita O’Day (“arms akimbo, spread / to gather the music”). In his note about Jack Bruce, bass player for the legendary band Cream, which also included Eric Clapton and Ginger Baker, Murphy describes how Bruce’s iconic riff for “Sunshine of  Your Love” is a tribute to Jimi Hendrix. He recounts an amusing story about encountering Bruce and Baker  at the Rikki Tikk club in the Thames Hotel in Windsor. Murphy and his pals considered approaching them but thought better of it, sensing “they wanted to prepare themselves for the gig. Ginger Baker would probably have told us to piss off.”

Though not mawkish in the least, Notes expresses a satisfying nostalgia for a bygone era, at least for this septuagenarian rock and roller. Coming from Murphy’s perspective, the poems have an authenticity that captures that magical era in music.