Michael Martin Murphey closed out a successful decade of recording with the album "Land of Enchantment", which contained "Never Givin' Up on Love", "Got to Pay the Fiddler", "Route 66", and "Land of Enchantment", which became New Mexico's state ballad. Despite the impressive critical and commercial success he achieved throughout the 1980s, Michael Martin Murphey's creative heart and spirit began to focus on the Western music that first captured his imagination as a boy growing up in Texas. As early as 1985, Murphey performed with the New Mexico Symphony in a show called "A Night in the American West", which led to many
Law of the Land (album) of the Land" mostly contains songs that had already been recorded by other artists. The album features covers of Roberta Flack's "Killing Me Softly With His Song", The Beatles' "With A Little Help From My Friends", Traffic's "Feelin' Alright" and Dionne Warwick's "Walk On By". "Law of the Land" also contains the original version of "Papa Was A Rollin' Stone" (US #63, US R&B #24), which Norman Whitfield rerecorded into a huge hit for his other group, The Temptations. The album's title track was also recorded by both The Temptations and The Undisputed Truth; The Tempts' version was released as