Jim Murphy thanks God he's a country boy

America's Old Time Country Music Hall of Fame inductee Jim Murphy prepares to tune up his acoustic guitar at his home in Brick. Murphy and his band, Jim Murphy and the Pine Barons, will celebrate their 40th year in 2008. BRICK TOWNSHIP - So how does an Irish kid born and raised in Plainfield, New Jersey end up inAmerica's Old Time CountryMusic Hall of Fame?

It all beganwhen JimMurphywas a boy back in the late 1930s. He would hunker down next to the family's radio and tune into WAAT, out of Newark. The station had just started to play a smattering of country and western music.

There the boy would sit mesmerized, as he soaked up the sounds of singers like Roy Acuff, Jimmy Rogers and the Carter family.

"Itwas the old-time country sound of the '30s and '40s," said Murphy, now 75. "I really loved it. It was just starting to grow around the country. The first time I ever heard it, man, I just loved it."

He couldn't get enough of the melodies, the simplicity and the stories of country and bluegrassmusic.And he realized at a young age he had a gift.

In high school his friends called him "Murphy the Hillbilly."

"I had an innate gift, a blessing, to remember words,"Murphy said. "I could hear a songmaybe two times and remember it. It would just stick in my head. Everybody has a blessing. That's mine.Music."

He founded Jim Murphy and the Pine Barons back in 1969. They have been playing inAlbert Music Hall inWaretown for almost 40 years.

And the man who has written many songs during his lifetime doesn't know a note of music.

"I don't knowone note fromanother," he said. "All I know is chords."

JimMurphywas inducted into the Hall of Fame on Aug. 28, the onlyNewJerseyan to ever achieve that distinction.

The walls of his study in his Colonial Drive home he shares with his wife Shelagh are studded with proclamations from politicians - the Ocean County Board of Freeholders, the Brick Township Council, both branches of the NewJersey State Legislature - all honoring him for his induction.

"But I'm most in awe of this," he said, as he pointed to St. Dominic R.C. Church's weekly bulletin.

"They put me right in the church bulletin," he said with a smile.

His country music career was born in 1950, on the Seaside Heights boardwalk. Murphy and a friend were walking the boards when he spotted a dime. He picked it up and played the number 27 on a boardwalk amusement. He walked away with a ukulele.

Forty years later, Murphy and the band had just finished a performance at Albert Hall when a man approached him.

"He said, 'Do you remember me? I was the guy who was with you the night you found the dime,' "Murphy recalled.

JimMurphy can do an Irish brogue that rivals Barry Fitzgerald in "Going My Way." Butmost often, you'll hear a twang fromthe hills in his voice.

He didn't spend much time in the hills. He and Shelaghmarried young. He was 20, she was 19. Together they had seven children, including a baby who died in infancy. They have 13 grandchildren.

TheMurphys still live in the same home they moved to in 1960, when the children were young.

"Five traffic lights in town," he says of that long ago Brick Township.

Murphy went to Seton Hall at night on theG.I.Bill after he returned fromtwo years in theArmy during the KoreanWar.

He earned a bachelor's degree in education and went on to teach for several years. By 1960, hewas the teacher/principal at the Bay Head School. That was followed by teaching stints at the Ocean Road School in Point Pleasant and in Brielle.

In 1963, Dick Lewis, the radio voice of WJLK, suggestedMurphy do aweekly show on countrymusic.He played and told stories on his show for years.

Murphy earned a master's degree in school administration fromRutgers in 1966. He came to the Brick Township School district in 1969, where he and Brick iconWarren Wolf both served as assistant superintendents.

He stayed in Brick for almost 25 years, and retired in 1993.

"I've done nothing but music since I retired," Murphy said. "It's been a blessing."

The walls of his study are lined with pictures of Murphy with some of country music's legends - Tom T. Hall. Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs,MerleHaggard andDolly Parton.

A 1970 photo features a grinning Murphy with a string tie posing with a shorthaired, tie-wearing Willie Nelson at the then-Garden StateArts Center in Holmdel.

Hank Williams, the country music icon who died at 29, is his hero.AHankWilliams bobblehead sits onMurphy's desk.Acopy of the latestHankWilliams FanClubNewsletter is on a nearby table.

He can talk about Hank Williams and his short, troubled life for hours.

"It's the whole persona," Murphy said. "Hismusic, theway he sings it, themessage of it. The first time I ever heard his voice I said "Wow!"

Murphy and his band's latest record is "GoNewJersey," an ode to his beloved home state that includes songs like "Jersey Blue," "Forked River Mountain," "Chatsworth Town," "Lenni-Lenape," "Run Molly, Run" and the "Garden StateWaltz."

The inside jacket of the CD is dedicated to Murphy's parents, Dominick and Julia DyerMurphy, who left CountyMayo in Ireland in the 1920s for a new life in New Jersey.

"They broughtwith thema great love for life, for each other, and a deep love ofmusic," Murphy wrote in the liner notes. "I can see Pop sitting by the radio with his 'jaws harp' playing along, and hear Mom going around the house making the beds, singing as she went…She left her lilt to me and it's a joy that I can share with you in these songs."

Jim Murphy - singer, songwriter, musicologist, humorist, husband, father, grandfather, former teacher and school administrator - has no intention of slowing down anytime soon.

"I'll keep on rolling until the wheels fall off the wagon," he said.

Jim Murphy and the Pine Barons are slated to perform at 7:30 p.m. on Jan. 26 at the Albert Music Hall in Waretown and at noon on Feb. 10 at the hall for a bluegrass festival.

Formore information, call 732-892-1466, or e-mailMurphy at jimmurpb@verizon.net.