Tom Paley

Tom Paley

Tom Paley is an American guitarist, banjo player and fiddle player from New York. He is best known for his work with the New Lost City Ramblers in the 1950s and 1960s, and he also performs as a solo musician and in a range of collaborations and string bands.

Early life and musical background

Born in 1928 in New York City, Paley grows up hearing spirituals and political songs in a household shaped by left-wing activism. In his early teens he spends several years in California with his mother before returning to New York, where he begins learning guitar and banjo. He also visits clubs where performers such as Lead Belly and Josh White appear, and starts performing himself, both alone and with other musicians including Woody Guthrie. He also books performances for others.

From September 1950 to May 1951, he studies in the mathematics department at Yale University, but after a year he decides to pursue music rather than mathematics.

Recording career

In 1953, Paley records his first album, Folksongs of the Southern Appalachian Mountains, for Elektra Records. He later records extensively as a solo artist and in collaborations, covering folk, bluegrass and old-time material.

The New Lost City Ramblers

Paley plays a key role in the formation of the New Lost City Ramblers. On 25 May 1958, he, John Cohen and Mike Seeger perform live on air on John Dildine’s weekly folk music radio show on WASH-FM; this is the first appearance of the group that later takes the name the New Lost City Ramblers. Paley records nine albums with the group between 1958 and 1962.

He leaves when Cohen and Seeger want the group to become more professional and he refuses to sign statements about his political allegiances. Tracy Schwarz replaces him. Paley is later cited as an influence by artists including Bob Dylan and the Grateful Dead.

Other groups and collaborations

After leaving the New Lost City Ramblers, Paley forms the Old Reliable String Band with Roy Berkeley and Artie Rose before leaving the United States in 1963, when he and his wife Claudia move to Sweden. They stay there until 1965, when they move to England, where he has increasingly been working.

He also performs intermittently with the London-based New Deal String Band from the 1960s onwards. His work with this group includes Down in the Willow and Dealing a New Hand (from the Same Old Deck).

Paley records and performs with a number of other musicians, including Jean Ritchie, Oscar Brand, Harry and Jeanie West, Eric Weissberg, Art Rosenbaum, Marshall Brickman, Peggy Seeger, Claudia Paley, Barbara Lester, Ben Paley, Bert Deivert, James Reams and Bill Christophersen.

Later work

After learning the fiddle, Paley records two albums of traditional Scandinavian music with his son Ben: On a Cold Winter Night and Svenska Låtar: Swedish Fiddle Tunes. He later works with Bert Deivert on Beware Young Ladies!, and releases Roll on, Roll on in 2012.

He continues to live in London, tours widely in the UK, US, Scandinavia and elsewhere, and continues to perform and record. He is honorary president of the Friends of American Old-Time Music and Dance.

Selected recordings

Solo recordings include Sue Cow, Hard Luck Papa. Old Time Picking Styles and Techniques, Stern Old Bachelor and Old Tom Moore and More. His collaborative releases also include Shivaree!, Courtin's A Pleasure, Folk Banjo Styles, Who's Going to Shoe Your Pretty Little Foot?, Heartsease, Separate Ways and Paley & Son.