Tom Paxton

Tom Paxton came out of the Greenwich Village folk scene of the early 1960s and became one of its most recorded songwriters. His songs have been sung by everyone from Pete Seeger to Dolly Parton, and he was still writing and releasing albums more than fifty years later.

Career

Paxton studied drama at the University of Oklahoma and moved to New York, where he became a regular at the Gaslight Cafe in Greenwich Village. In 1960 he became the first writer signed to Milt Okun's Cherry Lane Music; he auditioned with "The Marvelous Toy". He appeared at the Newport Folk Festival in 1963 and signed to Elektra Records in 1964, recording seven albums for the label. His first UK tour in 1965 began a long relationship with British audiences.

He later recorded with Steve Goodman, founded his own Pax Records in 1987, made a string of children's albums in the 1990s, and released his 63rd album, Boat in the Water, in 2017. He received the ASCAP Lifetime Achievement Award in Folk Music in 2002 and the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2009.

Songs others made famous

• "The Last Thing on My Mind": a US country top ten for Porter Wagoner and Dolly Parton in 1967.
• "Bottle of Wine": a top-ten radio hit for the Fireballs in 1968.
• "Ramblin' Boy": learned by Pete Seeger in 1963.
• "Whose Garden Was This": the title track of a 1970 John Denver album.
• "The Marvelous Toy": a children's favourite.

Selected albums