Performance · Production

Walter Murphy

American score composer

United States • b. 1952-12-19

Walter Murphy is credited on 574 releases across 116 albums tracked on Gatefold, active 1974–2025 — the collector-built map of who actually made the music.

View as artist →

Start your shelf →Open in app
Photo of Walter Murphy

574

Pressings credited

116

Albums

6

Decades active

205

In collections

Biography

Walter Anthony Murphy Jr. (born December 19, 1952) is an American composer, keyboardist, songwriter, and record producer. He is best known for the instrumental "A Fifth of Beethoven", a disco adaptation of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony which topped the charts in 1976 and was featured on the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack in 1977. Further classical-disco fusions followed, such as "Flight '76", "Toccata and Funk in 'D' Minor" "Bolero", and "Mostly Mozart", but were not as successful. In a career spanning over five decades, Murphy has written music for numerous films and TV shows, including The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, The Savage Bees, Stingray, Wiseguy, The Commish, Profit, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Looney Tunes, and How Murray Saved Christmas. He has had a long-running partnership with Seth MacFarlane, composing music for his films and TV shows such as Family Guy, American Dad, The Cleveland Show, Ted, Ted 2 and the Ted television series.

Bio from Wikipedia

Credited work

574 releases · 116 albums · active 1974–2025

  • Performance · 1,177
  • Production · 185
  • Other credits · 51

Studios: United Western Studios · Mediasound · Group IV Recording Studios · Sigma Sound Studios, New York

Discography

Records they worked on — most-collected first.

Frequent collaborators

Around the web

See who really made the music.

Gatefold maps every producer, engineer, and player across your shelf — the credits no one else surfaces.

Start your shelf →

Free forever. Works with 10 records or 10,000.