"Eddie Murphy's musical forays are usually listed as an ""also ran"" in an entertainment career that's been as wildly successful as it has been multi-dimensional. Murphy was born and raised in New York, the son of a hard-working mother and an absent father who was murdered when Eddie was still in grade school. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Murphy developed a strong interest in stand up comedy and to this day he credits the work of Richard Pryor and Bill Cosby as his primary inspirations. He got steady stand-up work in his late teens, mostly touring clubs along the East Coast, until he got offered a role on Saturday Night Live. It wasn't long before Eddie Murphy moved on to bigger and better things, although SNL is usually cited as the major springboard for his acting career- as it was with some of his contemporaries, Mike Myers, Phil Hartman, and Bill Murray.Throughout much of the 1980s Eddie Murphy was the cocaine of entertainment, inhaled vigorously by the American public in three parallel genre lines-- stand-up routines for an adult audience, comedy movies for families and pop music for nobody in particular. According to many, the third snort proved to be one too many. He released How Could It Be in 1985, which contained a smash hit single, ""Party All The Time."" While the single was wildly popular when it was released, the critics have not exactly been kind during the ensuing backlash against Eddie Murphy's music career in the ‘80s. The debatable success of ""Party All The Time"" was but a pebble in the road of a Sherman Tank acting career which included the 48 Hrs. series, the Beverly Hills Cop series, The Nutty Professor series, the Shrek series, the Dr. Doolittle series, I Spy, Bowfinger, Vampire in Brooklyn and Coming to America, just to name a few.Eddie Murphy successfully revived his music career in the mid 2000s, this time using his acting talents as the electrode padles. 2006's Dreamgirls, a musical which starred Jamie Foxx and Beyonce Knowles, cast Murphy as the singer James ""Thunder"" Early. Highly acclaimed by critics across the board, Murphy's vocals can be heard in the movie and on the soundtrack."
