King of the Boards
By Gary D. Doyle
While he is usually overlooked or virtually unknown to the average motorsport enthusiast, Jimmy Murphy has to rank as one of the greatest American racing drivers of all time. Not only was he the winningest board track racer of the roaring ’20s, but Murphy also has the rare distinction of having won both the 1922 Indianapolis 500 and the 1921 French Grand Prix as well.
Orphaned by the great San Francisco earthquake of 1906, the young Murphy moved to Los Angeles to live with his aunt and uncle, and from that hot bed of racing activity, moved up the ladder from riding mechanic, to driver, to champion. His untimely death in a dirt track race at Syracuse, New York, in 1924 sent shockwaves through the motorsport community and robbed the world of one of its most talented and affable champions.
In “King of the Boards,” author Gary Doyle completes a journey that started for him as a childhood fascination with a swashbuckling distant relative (his grandmother was a child in the home that Murphy moved into after being orphaned). Through years of painstaking research, Doyle has not only created what is certainly the definitive book on the life of Murphy, but has in the process also created an incredible treatise on the history of early board track and oval racing in the teens and twenties.
While Doyle’s lively narrative provides a familiarity that only a family member could provide, one of the most remarkable aspects of this book is the nearly 300 stunning period photographs and 50 pieces of artwork that richly illustrate the story of Murphy’s life. In fact, the photography is so well reproduced that anyone with an interest in the early days of racing will be lost in this book for hours.
The books sells for $90 for a dust covered edition or $110 for one with a slipcase (plus S&H) and can be ordered online at www.king-of-the-boards.com or by phone at (602) 636-0471.
