James Ramsey Murray

James Ramsey Murray was born in Ballardvale, Massachusetts, on March 7, 1841. He studied at the Musical Institute in North Reading, where teachers included prominent American music educators Lowell Mason, George F. Root, William B. Bradbury, and George J. Webb. During the American Civil War he served as an army musician and wrote the popular song Daisy Deane while stationed in Virginia.

After the war Murray worked in Chicago with Root & Cady and later moved to Cincinnati, where he became an editor for the John Church Company. He composed, compiled, and edited music for schools, Sunday schools, and churches. His collections included Pure Diamonds, Royal Gems, and Dainty Songs for Little Lads and Lasses, reflecting the nineteenth-century market for accessible music that children and amateur singers could learn readily.

Dainty Songs, published in 1887, introduced the melody now called MUELLER with Away in a Manger. The printing placed Murray's initials with the music, and modern hymnological authorities regard him as the probable composer. The later name MUELLER does not identify a securely documented composer named Carl Mueller. Murray died in Cincinnati on March 10, 1905. His career encompassed far more than one carol tune, but MUELLER became his most enduring contribution to congregational repertory and, nearly a century later, supplied the melody for Sandra Dean's Advent text.