Tom Paxton
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Background information
Birth name Thomas Richard Paxton
Born October 31, 1937 (1937-10-31) (age 70). Chicago, Illinois.
Genre(s) Folk
Occupation(s) Singer-songwriter, guitarist.
Instrument(s) Guitar, Vocals
Years active 1962 - Present
Label(s) Elektra, Vanguard, Rhino, Reprise, Flying Fish, Rounder, Mountain Railroad, Sugar Hill, Appleseed
Influences Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie, Bob Gibson, Burl Ives, Tom Lehrer, Mississippi John Hurt
Similar Artists Dave Van Ronk, Phil Ochs, David Bromberg, Cisco Houston, Guy Carawan, John Denver, Anne Hills, Bob Dylan
Website
http://www.tompaxton.com/
Thomas R. Paxton (born October 31, 1937) is a well-known American folk singer and singer-songwriter who has been writing, performing and recording music for over forty years.
His songs have experienced enduring appeal, including modern standards such as "The Last Thing on My Mind", "Bottle of Wine", "Whose Garden Was This", "The Marvelous Toy", and "Ramblin' Boy". Paxton's songs have been recorded by Pete Seeger and The Weavers, Judy Collins, Joan Baez, Doc Watson, Harry Belafonte, Peter, Paul and Mary, The Kingston Trio, The Chad Mitchell Trio, John Denver, Dolly Parton and Porter Wagoner, Willie Nelson, Flatt & Scruggs, The Fireballs, and many others (see covers). He has performed thousands of concerts around the world in such places as Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Hong Kong, Scandinavia, France, Germany, Italy, Belgium, Holland, England, Scotland, Ireland, Canada, and all over the United States; and his songs have been translated into various languages. Paxton enjoys a strong relationship with fans throughout the world.
Tom Paxton's songs can be emotionally affective, and cover a wide range of topics, from the serious and profound to the lighthearted and comical. "What Did You Learn In School Today?" mocks the way children are often taught lies. "Jimmy Newman" is the story of a dying soldier, and "My Son John" is a moving song about a soldier who comes back home and can't even begin to describe what he's been through. "A Thousand Years" tells the chilling tale of Neo-Nazi uprising, and the "Train for Auschwitz" is about the holocaust. "On the Road to Srebrenica" is about Muslims who were killed in a 1995 massacre in Bosnia and Herzegovina. "The Bravest" is a song about the firefighters who gave their lives while trying to save others on September 11, 2001. Then there are Tom's lighthearted "short shelf-life songs", which are topical songs about current events and things in the news, and these songs change all the time as new ones are written and old ones can reappear as things have a way of cycling around in this world. They include: "In Florida" about the 2000 election scandal; "Without DeLay", a song about the disgraced former congressman; "Bobbitt" about the John and Lorena Bobbitt fiasco; "Little Bitty Gun" which lampoons Nancy Reagan; "I'm Changing My Name to Chrysler" about the controversial federal loan guarantee to Chrysler in 1979; "The Ballad of Spiro Agnew"; and "Lyndon Johnson Told the Nation" (which more recently has become "George W. Told the Nation").
Early life
Thomas Richard Paxton was born October 31, 1937, in Chicago, Illinois, to Burt and Esther Paxton. His father was "a chemist, mostly self-educated"[1], and as his health began to fail him the family moved to Wickenberg, Arizona. It was here that young Tom began riding horses at the numerous dude ranches around Wickenberg. It was also here that he was first introduced to folk music, though at the time he did not know what it was called. He also discovered the music of Burl Ives while in Wickenberg.[2]
The family moved to Bristow, Oklahoma, in 1948, which Paxton considers as his hometown. Soon after, his father passed away from a stroke. Tom was "about fifteen when [he] received his first stringed instrument: the ukulele"[3]. At sixteen, he received a guitar from his aunt, began to immerse himself in the music of Burl Ives and Harry Belafonte.[4]
In 1955, Tom enrolled at the University of Oklahoma, where he studied in the drama school. It was here that he first found other enthusiasts of folk music, and discovered the music of Woody Guthrie and The Weavers. Paxton would later note, "Woody was fearless; he'd take on any issue that got him stirred up... and he became one of my greatest influences."[5] During college, Tom was in a group known as the Travellers, and they sang in a coffeehouse off-campus. Tom's first original song was an Elizabethan murder ballad with the title "Robert".[6]
Early career
Upon graduating from the University of Oklahoma in 1959 with a BFA, Tom acted in summer stock theatre and briefly tried graduate school before joining the Army. While attending the Clerk Typist School in Fort Dix, New Jersey, he began writing songs on his typewriter and spent almost every weekend visiting Greenwich Village in New York City during the emerging early 1960s folk revival.[7]
Shortly after his honorable discharge from the Army, Tom auditioned for the Chad Mitchell Trio via publisher Milt Okun in 1960. He initially received the part, but his voice did not blend well enough with those of the group members. However, after singing "The Marvelous Toy" for Okun, Tom became the first writer signed to Milt's music publishing company, Cherry Lane Music Publishing.[8]
Tom began working at The Gaslight Cafe in Greenwich Village, where he became a mainstay. In 1962, he recorded a privately-produced live album at the Gaslight entitled, "I'm the Man That Built the Bridges". During his stay in Greenwich Village, Tom published some of his songs in the folk magazines Broadside and Sing Out!, and performed alongside such folksingers as Bob Dylan, Phil Ochs, Eric Andersen, Dave Van Ronk, and Mississippi John Hurt. Tom met his future wife, Midge, at the Gaslight one night in January of 1963 after being introduced to her by David Blue.[9]
Pete Seeger began performing a few of Tom's songs in 1963, including "Ramblin' Boy" (which Pete performed at The Weavers reunion concert at Carnegie Hall), and "What Did You Learn in School Today?" Meanwhile, Tom had increased his profile as a performer, appearing at the 1963 Newport Folk Festival, which was recorded by Vanguard Records. A month after Newport in 1963, Tom married Midge. He began traveling the country on the coffeehouse and small-venue circuit before returning to New York.[10]
After returning to New York, Tom signed with Elektra Records in 1964, a label famous for its folksingers during the early-to-mid 1960s. Tom would go on to record seven albums for Elektra. As the folk revival hit its peak, Tom began getting more work outside of New York City, including benefit concerts and college campus visits. Numerous musicians of various musical genres began recording Tom's songs as the 1960s progressed.
Of the songwriters on the Greenwich Village scene of the 1960s, Dave Van Ronk said, "Dylan is usually cited as the founder of the new song movement, and he certainly became its most visible standard-bearer, but the person who started the whole thing was Tom Paxton... he tested his songs in the crucible of live performance, he found that his own stuff was getting more attention than when he was singing traditional songs or stuff by other people... he set himself a training regimen of deliberately writing one song every day.. Dylan had not yet showed up when this was happening, and by the time Bobby came on the set, with at most two or three songs he had written, Tom was already singing at least 50 percent his own material. That said, it was Bobby's success that really got the ball rolling. Prior to that, the folk community was very much tied to traditional songs, so much so that songwriters would sometimes palm their own stuff off as traditional."[11]
In 1965, Tom made his first tour of the United Kingdom. The tour was the beginning of a still-thriving professional relationship that has included many tours of the country since then.
In 1967, the rock group Clear Light recorded a menacing and lengthy psychedelic version of Tom's song "Mr. Blue". Then in 1968, Tom managed to score a Top 10 radio hit when The Fireballs recorded his song "Bottle of Wine". In the 1960s, Tom even licensed one of his songs, "My Dog's Bigger than Your Dog", for use in a Ken-L Ration dog food commercial. Not too fazed by the success of some of his songs, Tom continued writing and performing. Though some of his songs were becoming hits for other people, he hadn't any huge hits of his own recordings. Tom was not interested in jumping on the folk rock (or, as he once joked, "folk rot") bandwagon though, and continued his folk singer-songwriter style on albums like Outward Bound (1966) and Morning Again (1967). As musical trends changed and people became more experimental with their sound, Tom decided to try some more elaborate recording techniques, including neo-chamber music with string sections, flutes, horns, piano, as well as his acoustic guitar and vocals, similar to what his labelmate Judy Collins and his friend Phil Ochs were experimenting with around this time. Tom finally broke into the album pop charts with The Things I Notice Now in the summer of 1969, and also charted with Tom Paxton 6 in the spring of the following year. The "Baroque Folk" experimentation on his recordings was short-lived though, and Tom tended to think that the music was becoming too overproduced and away from the more natural acoustic roots that he loved the most. Tom continued to sing and perform his songs on acoustic guitar at his live performances, and it wasn't too long before his albums would once again generally reflect his original traditional-sounding style.
In 1969, Tom performed at the Isle of Wight Festival and was very well received by the English audience.
As he continued to record for Elektra and perform extensively, Tom and Midge had two daughters: Jennifer and Kate.
Middle career
After a stay in England, due to the professional success and love of the country, Tom and Midge went on a tour of New Zealand and China, and even appeared on a Chinese talk show. Tom released How Come the Sun in 1971, and that album gave him his highest chart ranking in the U.S., but it only got up to number 120, and his next album, Peace Will Come (1972), barely even reached the charts. The family soon returned to New York, and Tom and his family moved to the Washington D.C. area around 1977. After recording three albums for Reprise Records and a few for "an English label that didn't pan out well"[12], Tom signed with Vanguard Records, with whom he recorded a live album with Steve Goodman, New Songs From the Briarpatch (1977); which contained some of Tom's topical songs of the 1970s, including "Talking Watergate" and "White Bones of Allende", as well as a song dedicated to Mississippi John Hurt entitled "Did You Hear John Hurt?"
In 1978, Tom released his album Heroes, which contained a song dedicated to his friend Phil Ochs, who had unfortunately taken his own life in 1976. The album also includes the song "The Death of Stephen Biko", which details the brutal killing of anti-apartheid activist Steve Biko in South Africa.
In 1984, Tom briefly was a member of a trio (along with Bob Gibson and Anne Hills) known as the Best of Friends.
After recording for labels like Mountain Railroad and Flying Fish in the 1980s, Paxton started his own label (Pax Records) in 1987.
It was during this time that Tom continued to suffer from an undiagnosed and deepening depression that affected his work. With some advice from Midge, Tom began to look for a solution, and he was eventually diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder, which Tom is still treated for today.[13].
Late career
As the 1990s rolled around, Tom began delving deeply into children's music, recording nine children's albums during the decade. Along with his good friend Jim Rooney, Tom recorded a live album in 1996 that contained some new comical songs about current events. Eric Weissberg, John Gorka, Robin and Linda Williams, among others, also performed; and the album was titled Live for the Record. In the mid-1990s, Tom also began to give more workshops in songwriting.
In 2000, Tom once again began to write more of the topical songs for which he originally became known. In 2001, he released an album with Anne Hills entitled Under American Skies, and in 2002, Tom released an album of all new topical songs entitled Looking for the Moon (Appleseed Recordings). Tom was pleased with Looking for the Moon, and expressed that he thought it was probably the best album he'd done in a long time.[14] Looking for the Moon contains the song "The Bravest", which is about the firefighters who gave their lives while trying to save others on September 11, 2001. Also, around this time, Tom began writing and releasing his "Short Shelf-Life Songs" about current events for free download on his website.[15] The "short shelf-life songs", as Tom calls them, are about politics, and things going on in the news. In 2006, Tom rewrote a song of his from 1965 entitled "Lyndon Johnson Told The Nation", about the escalation of the war in Vietnam, and made it into, "George W. Told The Nation", about the surge in the Iraq war.
Tom continues to perform yearly tours of the United States and United Kingdom.
In 2007, Tom became one of the founding members of the Copyright Alliance, whose purpose is to promote the cultural and economic benefits of copyrights.
Personal life
Tom married his wife Midge in 1963, and their marriage continues to this day. Tom and Midge currently reside in Alexandria, Virginia. They have two daughters, Jennifer and Kate, and three grandsons, Christopher, Sean, and Peter. All have been sources of inspiration for Tom's songs.
Awards, honors, and nominations
In February of 2002, Tom was honored with the ASCAP Lifetime Achievement Award in Folk Music. A few days later, he received three Wammies (Washington, DC, Area Music Awards); as Best Male Vocalist in the "traditional folk" and "children's music" categories, and for Best Traditional Folk Recording of the Year for Under American Skies (the duo album he made with Anne Hills in 2001). This was the first Paxton album to receive an award of any kind.
Tom's album, Looking for the Moon (2002), received a 2003 Grammy nomination for "Best Contemporary Folk Album". He was first nominated for a Grammy in 2002 for his children's album, Your Shoes, My Shoes. Tom's album, Live In The UK (2005), received a 2006 Grammy nomination in the "Traditional Folk" category.
In 2004, the Martin Guitar Company introduced the HD-40LSH Tom Paxton Signature Edition acoustic guitar in his honor.
In 2005, Tom received a Lifetime Achievement Award for Songwriting at BBC Radio 2's Folk Awards at London's Brewery Arts Centre.
In 2006, Tom received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the North American Folk Music and Dance Alliance.
On January, 22, 2007, Paxton was honoured with an official Parliamentary tribute at the British House of Commons at the start of his 2007 United Kingdom tour.
Covers
Tom Paxton's songs have been recorded by Pete Seeger and The Weavers, Judy Collins, Joan Baez, The Carter Family, Johnny Cash (with Diana Trask), Doc Watson, Harry Belafonte, Dave Van Ronk, Eric Andersen, José Feliciano, Peter, Paul and Mary, The Kingston Trio, The Chad Mitchell Trio, Bob Gibson, Plácido Domingo, John Denver, Arlo Guthrie, Carolyn Hester, Nanci Griffith, Sandy Denny, Marianne Faithfull, Dolly Parton and Porter Wagoner, Willie Nelson, Flatt & Scruggs, J. D. Crowe, The Dillards, Hank Snow, Charley Pride, Hank Locklin, Jean Shepard, Bill Anderson, Chet Atkins, Glen Campbell, Tony Rice, Herb Pedersen, Neil Diamond, Mel Tormé, Anne Murray, Dion, Pat Boone, Tiny Tim, Au Go-Go Singers (featuring Stephen Stills and Richie Furay), Gene Clark, Gram Parsons, Clarence White, Rick Danko, Hoyt Axton, Mary Hopkin, Anne Hills, Cathy Fink & Marcy Marxer, Jim and Jean, Glenn Yarbrough, The Highwaymen, Wally Whyton, Cry, Cry, Cry, Dennis Brown, Nana Mouskouri, Joe Dassin, The Pogues, The Fureys, The Rovers, The Havalinas, Noel Harrison, The Spinners, Daniel O'Donnell, Sharon, Lois & Bram, Larry Groce, The Vejtables, The Move, The Seekers, The Fireballs, and Clear Light, among others.
Whew! Just got back from the dentist. Didn't know it was so late in the day.
