2 November 2011

Paxton

Some songs stick in your mind without you being conscious of allowing them to be stored there. For me, one of those songs is "The Last Thing on My Mind" by Tom Paxton. He was born in Chicago, Illinois in 1937 and was 74 on Sunday. A genuine troubadour, Paxton has sung of industrial strikes, social injustices and threats to the environment as well as of fatherhood, family life and romantic love. Here is at the age of twenty nine:-

And here he is with the legendary Irish folk artiste, Liam Clancy who died in December 2009. I'm not sure when this concert happened but I'd judge some time in the mid-nineteen nineties, thirty years after the first clip:-
In the very early sixties when Bob Dylan made his legendary journey from Minnesota to the coffee houses of Greenwich Village, Tom Paxton was already performing there. Some say that he was the real father of that "new folk music" and at first the young Dylan was very much in his shadow - perhaps taking note, becoming increasingly aware of the endless possibilities of self-penned folk song.

Are you going away with no word of farewell?
Will there be not a trace left behind?
Well, I could have loved you better
Didn't mean to be unkind, you know
That was the last thing on my mind

1 comment:

  1. I love that song. I had forgotten how much. Thank you, and thanks for posting both versions. I love to sing along with 60s folk songs and the second version helped me pick out the melody. My son sends this message, however: "Did you HAVE to make her sing?"

    That's OK, his kids will be complaining when he sings along with Britney Spears and Justin Bieber. Yuck.

    There was no time like the 60s.

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