Just downloaded a couple of great Tom Paxton albums.

[madfloridian]

I have not heard him in years. Heard some of his songs on XM Folk Village, and found these.

Looking For the Moon (my favorite)
http://www.emusic.com/album/Tom-Paxton-Looking-For-The-Moon-MP3-Download/11065771.html

Live from Mountain Stage
http://www.emusic.com/album/Tom-Paxton-Live-from-Mountain-Stage-MP3-Download/10944749.html

Just simple instruments and nice music. I had forgotten what great songs he wrote.

http://www.richieunterberger.com/paxton.html

"One of the top topical songwriters of the folk-rock era, Tom Paxton never embraced electric folk-rock as much as most of his contemporaries did. However, he knew many of its principal figures well, and wrote several songs that were covered by folk-rock artists, such as "The Last Thing on My Mind," "Bottle of Wine," "Mr. Blue," and "I Can't Help But Wonder Where I'm Bound." Here he talks about folk-rock and his place in it.

.."Judy Collins covered some of your songs. I think when people write about her, it's not often noted that she had a real superb eye for selecting material, especially from people that weren't the safest choices. Did you know her before she started recording your songs?

I did, yes. I met her -- I must have met her in '61, late '60 perhaps. I admired her right from the beginning. Just a gorgeous voice. And she played very strong guitar, too. People don't realize that. She doesn't play much guitar anymore, but she was self-accompanied and solo, and she played very strong self-accompaniment. She did a concert album. I think she recorded it at the Village Gate, and did three of my songs on it, which was just wonderful. She did "Bottle of Wine," "Ramblin' Boy," and "The Last Thing on My Mind." I think those were the three she did. And I was still so new at it all I didn't realize how fabulous a break that was. But it was. That album sold very well, and got my songs out to a lot more people."

" It's sometimes written that you were among the circle that Bob Dylan bounced song ideas off of in the mid-1960s, and the impression given by some historians is that it was like the king being surrounded by a court. I'm interested in your memory of the situation, since one of the things my book will be emphasizing is that Dylan was just a part of this mammoth musical movement, albeit a very important one.

I think that's astute of you. I think that it really was a question of, as they say in ancient Rome, first among equals. I don't think anybody, any of my contemporaries -- we all thought that Bob was phenomenal. But the thing is that songwriters love good songs. Songwriters love to hear good songs. So it was never hard to get us to like something if it was good. And it really had the effect of spurring us to keep trying to improve our writing, to hear good songs. And it just happened that a lot of the good songs we heard were from Bob. But I remember my excitement at hearing "Where Have All the Flowers Gone?" for the first time. A guy named Len Chandler sang it at the Gaslight one night. I went, what a great song that is. And the first time I heard Ian & Sylvia sing "Tomorrow Is a Long Time," which is a not widely sung Dylan song, I remember thinking that that song is utterly beautiful. I loved hearing great songs. They made me want to write great songs myself"