Page "Tom Paxton" Paragraph 13

In 1967, the rock group Clear Light recorded a menacing and lengthy psychedelic version of Paxton's song " Mr. Blue " on their only album Clear Light.

Porter Wagoner and Dolly Parton's recording of " The Last Thing on My Mind " reached the top ten on the U. S. country singles charts in December 1967.

Then in 1968, Paxton scored a Top 10 radio hit when The Fireballs recorded his song " Bottle of Wine ".

In the 1960s, Paxton licensed one of his songs, " My Dog's Bigger than Your Dog ", for use in a Ken-L Ration dog food commercial.

Not too fazed by the success of some of his songs, Paxton continued writing and performing.

Though some of his songs were becoming hits for other people, he hadn't any huge hits of his own recordings.

He was not interested in jumping on the folk rock ( or, as he once joked, " folk rot ") bandwagon though, and continued his folk singer-songwriter style on albums like Outward Bound ( 1966 ) and Morning Again ( 1968 ).

On January 20, 1968, three months after the death of Woody Guthrie, Paxton and a number of other prominent folk musicians performed at the Harold Leventhal produced " A Tribute to Woody Guthrie " concert at New York City's Carnegie Hall.

Paxton was determined to keep speaking out, writing, and singing songs of social significance.

As musical trends changed and people became more experimental with their sound, Paxton decided to try some more elaborate recording techniques, including neo-chamber music with string sections, flutes, horns, piano, various session musicians, as well as his acoustic guitar and vocals, similar to what his labelmate Judy Collins and his friend Phil Ochs were experimenting with around this time.

Paxton finally broke into the album pop charts with The Things I Notice Now in the summer of 1969, and also charted with Tom Paxton 6 in the spring of the following year.

His song " Whose Garden Was This ", an environmentalist anthem written for the first Earth Day, was later recorded by John Denver and became the title track of Denver's 1970 album.

The diverse " Baroque Folk " experimentation on Paxton's recordings was basically short-lived though, and he tended to think that the music was becoming too overproduced and away from the more natural acoustic roots that he loved best.

Regarding this time, he said, " the acoustic guitar has always been what I loved the most ...

I know I didn't have that rock mentality or anything.

I was still a kid from a small town in Oklahoma.

And I just wanted to hear folk songs.

" Paxton continued to sing and perform his songs on acoustic guitar at his live performances, and it wasn't too long before his albums would once again generally reflect his original traditional-sounding style.