Maureen Murphy loved to laugh.
The veteran Winnipeg vocalist and broadcaster was one of those magnetic people who drew people to her, whether it was through her quick wit, beautiful singing voice, the warmth that radiated from her, or yes, her laugh.
She died in December of complications from COPD. She was 73.
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Murphy and brother Robbie McDougall perform at a wedding.
“She was always lots of fun,” says her younger sister, Aileen Murphy, via Zoom from her home in Kamloops, B.C. “She loved to laugh and joke and just have a party all the time. She was very witty. She was a good playmate as a child. The three of us were together a lot.”
Born on Nov. 16, 1950, Murphy was the second-oldest of five children born to Dr. Claude Murphy and Winnifred (Peggy) Murphy: Kathleen was the eldest; Aileen, Robert and Paul came after Maureen.
Growing up in St. Boniface and Crescentwood, the three girls were close in age and did everything together — including sing.
They attended Convent of the Sacred Heart, where they were members of the Glee Club; Maureen competed at the Manitoba Music Festival, where she was often a finalist.
“My dad was a trombone player — he played trombone in the army band. My mother loved to sing. They were both musical. And my dad was very interested in getting us into it.”
So much so that he bought the girls guitars.
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Sugar N’ Spice’s first gig was opening for The Who in Edmonton in March 1968.
“None of us got that good at it,” Aileen says with a laugh. “But when we were doing the little folk singer kind of thing, we could do the three chords. We’d sing all the time. We loved Peter, Paul and Mary and anything we could do harmonies to.”
Those harmonies would provide the sugar in Sugar N’ Spice (sometimes stylized as Sugar & Spice), a Winnipeg folk-pop band that found early success thanks to a Randy Bachman-written single Not to Return, released in 1968 and a 1969 cover of Peter, Paul and Mary’s Cruel War.
“Kathleen was dating a fellow named John MacInnes. He knew we liked to sing and he was a musician himself,” Aileen recalls. MacInnes was in a band called the Mongrels and had teamed up with some of the guys from the Griffins. “John told them he knew these three girls and he got us together and that was pretty much the end of it.”
The Murphy sisters were just teenagers when the band formed in 1967; Maureen was 16, Kathleen was 17 and Aileen was only 14.
“My parents were not that thrilled — particularly about me,” Aileen says.
Still, their parents were supportive. In fact, the girls’ mom chaperoned them on their first out-of-town gig, which also happened to be a gig of a lifetime: opening for the Who in Edmonton on March 2, 1968. The poster described Sugar N’ Spice thus: “A group of three cute girls and five ugly boys are coming also.”
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Maureen was 16 when Sugar N’ Spice was formed.
After the show, the girls got an invitation back to the English rockers’ tour bus.
“I mean, of course we went,” Aileen says with a laugh. “We chatted with (bassist) John Entwistle and (drummer) Keith Moon and they wanted us to come to a party. And we said, ‘Well, we’ll tell the guys, they’ll be really pleased!’ And they said, ‘Well, no, don’t bother telling the guys.’
“Anyways, we got off the bus and we didn’t go to the party.” (“We didn’t realize we were the party,” Maureen told local music historian John Einarson in 2011.)
Being in a band with one’s siblings can make for a complicated dynamic — just look at the Everly Brothers. Or the Kinks. Or Oasis. But it worked for the Murphy sisters because they didn’t just love each other, they also genuinely liked each other. Sugar N’ Spice was something else to bond over.
“When we weren’t practising or performing, we were getting new outfits or trying new makeup and stuff like that — lots of false eyelashes,” Aileen says, wiggling her fingers in front of her eyes. “That part of it was fun, too.
“I mean, we were sisters. We had our spats, you know — like, we all like the same guy at once. But generally we got along.”
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Veteran broadcaster Maureen Murphy loved to sing, to laugh and joke.
Sugar N’ Spice were poised to break out in the U.S. on the strength of their rendition of Cruel War. But Peter Yarrow of Peter, Paul and Mary wasn’t properly credited on the single and threatened to sue, effectively putting a ceiling on the band’s upward trajectory.
After Sugar N’ Spice disbanded in 1973, the Murphy sisters moved on — to different cities and different careers, though their rubber arms could certainly be twisted into providing backup vocals on other musicians’ sessions.
“We had to make a deal with each other on the way to the studio — we are not joining the band,” Aileen says.
After a stint in Toronto, Maureen moved back to Winnipeg, where she parlayed her voice talents into a career in broadcasting.
“I thought that was a really good fit for her because she was funny,” Aileen says. “She was so funny. She was always joking about something.”
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Sugar N’ Spice had two hits, including the Randy Bachman-written single Not to Return.
Maureen co-hosted a morning radio show with Don (the Master of the Morning) Percy in the 1990s, but she had a soft spot for her years at CJOB in the 1980s.
“Working at ’OB was just the most fun,” Maureen told John Einarson in 2011. “My fondest memories in broadcasting are from that period.”
Former veteran CJOB traffic reporter Brian Barkley remembers her as personable and professional — and, of course, her “great, great, great sense of humour.”
Barkley had just reconnected with her in August, a few months before she died, spending two hours at the Red Top restaurant, “mostly just laughing and talking,” he says.
They planned to get together more often after that, but that would be the last time they’d see each other.
“We had huge fun, but there was also a moment in there too, gosh, that she put her hand on my hand and said, ‘You know, you’ve always been one of my best friends,’” he says. “It was a very significant, lovely moment, in the midst of all the fun. It just meant so much.”
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Maureen performs with Sugar N’ Spice, which included her two sisters, Kathleen and Aileen, and five male musicians.
In the early 2000s, Maureen left broadcasting and moved to Selkirk to take on the responsibility of caring for her aging parents — something she was very willing to do, Aileen says. After the death of their mother, Maureen remained with their father until his death in 2020 at the age of 101.
“She made it so that he could stay at home,” Aileen says. “She cared for him very tenderly, very gently. The two of them got along really well.”
Maureen and Aileen also remained very close. Even though they lived a few provinces apart, the sisters would still be sure to watch the Jets game together, texting each other their own private play-by-play.
“We talked on the phone every day,” Aileen says. “I went home for Christmas every year. Now, I know I can’t expect her to phone me and that’s so sad.”
The loss of such a big personality leaves a big hole.
“I miss everything about her,” Aileen says. “She was such a beautiful girl. Her sense of humour was flabbergasting. She’d make you roll in the aisles. I miss her terribly.
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Maureen is the dark-haired woman in the front.
“Both of my sisters I miss terribly. But Maureen, of course, is pretty fresh and raw. It probably always will be.”
jen.zoratti@winnipegfreepress.com
Jen Zoratti
Columnist
Jen Zoratti is a Winnipeg Free Press columnist and author of the newsletter, NEXT, a weekly look towards a post-pandemic future.