One Sunday in December 1960, a 23-year-old man stepped off a bus in New York City's Greenwich Village. He'd boarded the vehicle in New Jersey, where until recently he had served as a clerk in the Army Reserve. An interest in folk music, spawned by radio play of the Kingston Trio's version of the murder ballad "Tom Dooley" at the University of Oklahoma, drew him to the emerging folk revival.

Along with Phil Ochs, who would show up sometime later, Tom Paxton soon would become the movement's most popular composer of contemporary folk songs after Bob Dylan. In fairness, way after Dylan. But then there is only one of him, and "way after" could fairly characterize just about everybody except Elvis and the Beatles. Yet, still alive and active in his late 80s, Paxton has his own deserved, persistent international following. He's sent a staggering aggregation of albums into the world over the decades, and his songs have been covered by countless artists more famous than he is -- including, yes, Dylan.

"Paxton appeared to be the most centered and normal of the Village crowd," music journalist David Browne observes in Talkin' Greenwich Village, his 2024 history of the local music scene from the 1960s to the end of the century. Paxton's songs, which continue to flow from pen, guitar and mouth even now though the Village lies in his distant past, have remained stylistically encased in a melodic contemporary-folk vein, though a few covers have strayed into rock ("Bottle of Wine") and country ("The Last Thing on My Mind") arrangements and been popular hits.

Paxton is hardly unknown in the bluegrass realm, where he has plenty of notable friends represented in these metaphorical grooves. In the liner notes to Bluegrass Sings Paxton co-producer Jon Weisberger writes, "Every one of the featured artists jumped at the chance to take on a Tom Paxton song." There are a dozen of them, nearly all of them gems. (To my ears two, alas, seem rather mediocre. I'll let you decide which ones you think they are. I do wish "Bottle of Wine," "Outward Bound," or "Cotton Eye Joe" [not the traditional song] were to be found, but as usual nobody asked me.) In this -- the first and only album devoted solely to Paxton bluegrass covers -- the quality of the material, alongside the excellence of the acts, ensures pleasurable and multiple listenings.

I've heard loads of Paxton songs since that first Elektra release decades ago, but I am not acquainted with everything on Bluegrass Sings Paxton. Some, no surprise, are the never-unwelcome standards: "Last Thing," "Ramblin' Boy," "I Give You the Morning," "Leaving London," present and capably accounted for. Likewise the more recent "Central Square," as touching as any of the classics, with Laurie Lewis handling lead vocals. The estimable "The Same River Twice" and "Lookin' for the Moon," so my always uncertain memory tells me at least, are among those fresh to my ears.

You don't have to be conversant in Paxton's work, though, to appreciate the album. But it helps if like many bluegrass fans you lament the too-often mediocre quality of the genre's songwriting. Such lyrics give the impression that the composer or composers lazily put worn-out words to fancy picking, by which I mean the former is clearly a distant second thought. Paxton, on the other hand, seldom creates a song that has nothing of interest to say, and he's a more than able storyteller. If only more bluegrass recordings were to boast the substance this one possesses. Discerning fans will pick up on that immediately. And if they're unfamiliar with Paxton, they'll be meeting somebody they're likely to want to know better.

While you're here, check out these reviews of several Tom Paxton recordings.