Because
The Lord Nelson will not reopen until March 11th we have had to
cancel once again. Rowan & Rosie have been rescheduled for October. We
resume on April 4th when TOM PALEY will be joined by his son, BEN,
on fiddle and vocals.
A
pivotal figure of the great American folk revival, he influenced Pete Seeger
and Bob Dylan and gave lessons to Ry Cooder and Gerry Garcia of The Grateful
Dead.
After
leaving Yale he took the New York folk scene by storm, “...as if John The
Baptist had flown into town!” according to one reviewer. And Happy Traum
remembers how, “Tom Paley became one of the best guitar and banjo pickers in
the city, and was the inspiration of many, many other aspiring folk musicians.”
He
formed a duo with Woody Guthrie, who praised his “slick, fine expert music” and he
was a regular at the jam sessions at Leadbelly’s house, along with Sonny Terry
& Brownie McGhee.
“Tom
Paley was one nifty dude,” says fiddler Peter Stamphel. “More than anyone else
he introduced the modern acoustic guitar and banjo-picking styles to New York.
Before him, nearly everybody thrashed grossly on the nylon stringed guitar.
Paley brought Travis and Scruggs to the Big Apple, clear as a bell.”
Later,
Tom formed The New Lost City Ramblers, of whom Bob Dylan wrote: “Everything
about them appealed to me - their
style, their singing, their sound. I liked the way they looked, the way they
dressed and especially I liked their name. Their songs ran the gamut in styles,
everything from mountain ballads to fiddle tunes and railroad blues.”
“The
New Lost City Ramblers pioneered the renaissance of southern mountain music and
brought many traditional musicians into the mainstream folk music scene. They
played music as used to be sung. In Tom Paley they had a superb guitarist and
banjoist whose sardonic wit had become a hallmark of the Ramblers' stage shows.” Ray Allen, Folkways Magazine
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