Looking For The Moon - Tom Paxton

Looking For The Moon - Tom Paxton

Thomas Richard 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. "Beau John" is a civil rights era song about taking a stand against racial injustice. "A Thousand Years" tells the chilling tale of Neo-Nazi uprising, and "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 Paxton's "short shelf-life songs", which are topical songs about current events and things in the news. These songs can be lighthearted and comical, or serious depending on the situation, and they change all the time as new ones are written and old ones can reappear as things seem to have a way of cycling around in this world. They include: "In Florida", about the 2000 election scandal; "Without DeLay", a song about the 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").
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[edit] 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 Wickenburg, Arizona. It was here that young Tom began riding horses at the numerous dude ranches around Wickenburg. 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 Wickenburg.

The family moved to Bristow, Oklahoma, in 1948, which Paxton considers to be 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] Tom received a guitar from his aunt when he was sixteen, and he soon began to immerse himself in the music of Burl Ives and Harry Belafonte.
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...

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