Paul Clayton (folksinger) - Recordings

Recordings

In 1952, Clayton recorded a tape of bluegrass material with a friend, musician Bill Clifton, and sent it off to Stinson Records in New York with the hopes of interesting the label in issuing an album. Stinson declined, but considered four tracks for singles. However, the sides went unissued. After college, Stinson put out Clayton's first album, Whaling Songs & Ballads, which was released in cooperation with the New Bedford Whaling Museum. Another Stinson release, Waters of Tyne, followed, and over the next few years he recorded for a series of other relatively obscure labels, releasing Whaling and Sailing Songs on Tradition Records and Wanted for Murder: Songs of Outlaws and Desperados and Bloody Ballads: British and American Murder Ballads on Riverside Records, among others.

Through his tireless efforts at promotion, Clayton developed many useful connections, one of which brought him to the attention of a small but highly significant record company, Folkways Records. Folkways, led by Moe Asch, later recognized as the father of World Music, specialized in traditional material of a wide range, from Inuit and Patagonian songs to ballads sung by Serbo-Croats and Bulgarians. The venue was perfect for the traditional music Clayton specialized in.

Refocusing his attentions on the basics, he issued a series of albums for Folkways that brought together his grandfather's ballads and shanties with the rarities uncovered through his scholarly pursuits in Virginia. Four Clayton albums were released by Folkways in 1956 alone: his first, Bay State Ballads, followed by Folk Songs and Ballads of Virginia, Cumberland Mountain Folksongs and The Folkways-Viking Record of Folk Ballads of the English Speaking World. The next year, Folkways put out two more Clayton releases, American Broadside Ballads in Popular Tradition and Dulcimer Songs and Solos. In a span of just three years, he had recorded twelve albums.

In 1958, Clayton switched labels again, moving over to Elektra, an eclectic label that also specialized in folk music. He recorded Unholy Matrimony that year with Bob Yellin backing him on banjo and the next year released Bobby Burns' Merry Muses of Caledonia. His work was also featured in 1959 on the Folkways album Foc'sle Songs and Shanties with the Foc'sle Singers, whose members included Dave Van Ronk, Roger Abrahams and Bob Brill. His stay at Elektra was short, and following his second release with the label, he joined Monument Records, a smaller outfit, where he issued an EP, a series of singles and his final album, Paul Clayton, Folk Singer!, in 1965.

Other significant recordings by Clayton included a collaboration with Diane Hamilton and Liam Clancy entitled Instrumental Music of the Southern Appalachians, which featured field recordings of Etta Baker, Hobart Smith and other indigenous artists, and an album with Jean Ritchie, American Folk Tales & Songs, both for Tradition. He also recorded for the Library of Congress, and tapes he made of Rev. Gary Davis and Pink Anderson were used for the album American Street Songs on Riverside Records.