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Tom Paxton is gearing up for his final public performances
Club Passim in Cambridge, Massachusetts, has seen a number of stars take the stage over the years. Joan Baez, Tom Rush and Bob Dylan played there early in their careers. And recently, singer and songwriter Tom Paxton played one of his last concerts of his career there.
At 87 years old, Paxton has decided to stop playing shows by Memorial Day of 2025 after a robust career spanning decades.
When he started college at the University of Oklahoma in 1955, Paxton says he wasn’t political at all. Then he discovered Woody Guthrie and more folk musicians.
“I like to hear Burl Ives sing,” Paxton says. “As a matter of fact, I sat next to him in a green room in New York and thanked him for ruining my life because I went on to folk music and he just laughed.”
Paxton first gained fame when Pete Seeger and The Weavers sang his "Ramblin' Boy" at Carnegie Hall in 1963 after hearing Paxton's version just once.
He went on to write ballads like his 1964 hit "The Last Thing on My Mind." He also wrote odes to rootlessness and homelessness — like "Can't Help But Wonder," recorded by Johnny Cash — and songs of protest over the Vietnam War, the fate of the poor and the budding environmental movement.
“There's something that to this day I love about writing songs. It's like a career in midwifery,” Paxton says. “You catch a song, you catch a fragment. You're uncovering, it's there, and it's waiting for you to translate it.”
Songs by Tom Paxton
"The Last Thing on My Mind"
"Whose Garden was This?"
"The Marvelous Toy" (Live)
"Lyndon Johnson Told the Nation"
This segment aired on November 4, 2024.
