Subject: RE: Obit: Sandy Paton Obit in UK Guardian paper
From:
maeve
Date: 01 Oct 09 - 02:32 PM
In case it disappears, and because Sandy and Caroline and family are so important to so many of us, here's the article in its entirety. Thanks for making note of it, Roger the Skiffler.
From link above http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2009/sep/30/sandy-paton-obituary
********************************************************************** * guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 30 September 2009 18.56 BST
"During the late 1950s and early 60s, a wave of American folk singers broke on British shores – artists such as Ramblin' Jack Elliott, Richard Fariña and Bob Dylan. Amid this procession was a personable couple named Sandy and Caroline Paton.
Sandy Paton, who has died aged 80, continued to make music with Caroline for many years, but his most important contribution to folk music was to co-found the record label Folk-Legacy, which has survived the vicissitudes of the independent record business for almost half a century. Folk-Legacy LPs, instantly recognisable by their sober, black-and-white sleeves, introduced enthusiasts both to voices of the East Coast folk revival, such as Gordon Bok and Rosalie Sorrels, and to older practitioners such as the Kentucky singer Sarah Ogan Gunning and the North Carolina banjo player and singer Frank Proffitt, whose tale of the murderer Tom Dooley was turned into a million-selling disc by the Kingston Trio.
Paton's father was a geographer, and the family moved often. He spent his teens in Seattle, painting, acting and discovering folk music, eventually choosing the latter as his profession. In 1957 he met Caroline and later that year they visited Britain, performing at folk clubs such as the Troubadour and Eel Pie Island in London.
Paton recorded three EPs of American folk songs for the small Jazz Collector label and assisted the Scots folklorist Hamish Henderson in recording the celebrated Aberdeen singer Jeannie Robertson and her daughter Lizzie Higgins. While in Britain, Caroline gave birth to their son David, and some of the songs they sang to him appeared a couple of years later on their Topic EP Hush Little Baby.
Back in the US, Paton worked for a time in the record department of a Chicago store, building up its stock of folk albums. On a song-collecting trip to Appalachia, he recorded Proffitt and Horton Barker, a blind ballad singer from Virginia. Impressed by the tapes, his friend Lee Haggerty suggested they create a record label, and provided financial backing.
Based in Burlington, Vermont, where the Patons then lived, Folk-Legacy opened its catalogue in 1961 with an album by Proffitt. There were further LPs by traditional performers, such as two volumes of songs from the community of Beech Mountain, North Carolina, but the mainstays of the enterprise were artists such as Bok, Ed Trickett, Art Thieme and Michael Cooney, and the Scots singers Jean Redpath and Archie Fisher. A popular early release, Golden Ring, was subtitled A Gathering of Friends for Making Music. The phrase succinctly defines the Folk-Legacy ethic.
In a catalogue that eventually topped 120, the Patons allowed themselves an occasional album of their own, and over the years released Sandy & Caroline Paton, I've Got a Song, New Harmony and When the Spirit Says Sing. Paton also continued his field-recording work and in 1977 he produced the collection Brave Boys: New England Traditions in Folk Music for New World Records.
The Patons' services to folk music were recognised in awards from the California Traditional Music Society, the Memphis Dulcimer festival and the Eisteddfod festival of traditional arts in Massachusetts. In 1993 the Commission on the Arts in Connecticut, where they had moved in 1967, declared them "official State Troubadours".
Paton is survived by Caroline and their sons, David and Rob.
• Charles Alexander (Sandy) Paton, folk musician and record company owner, born January 22 1929; died July 26 2009
Sandy Paton obituary"
This article was first published on guardian.co.uk at 18.56 BST on Wednesday 30 September 2009. It appeared in the Guardian on Thursday 1 October 2009 on p37 of the Obituaries section. It was last updated at 18.56 BST on Wednesday 30 September 2009.
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sj
