Ellis Paul - Growing Up

Growing Up

Ellis Paul was born in Fort Kent, Maine, a small, rural potato-farming town near the Canadian border. Paul's family had strong connections to the potato industry — his father, Ed Plissey, was Executive Director of the Maine Potato Commission and his grandfather owned a 140-acre (0.57 km2) potato farm. Schools in the area closed for three weeks each year so that school children could help with the potato harvest. Paul spent many hours working on his grandfather's farm. Paul's mother, the former Marilyn Bonney of Buckfield, Maine, is a University of Maine graduate and was an extension agent for northern Aroostook County. She and her husband often worked together on special projects for the service. In the 1960s, Mrs. Plissey produced her own television show "The Aroostook Homemaker" which aired every third week on Presque Isle television station WAGM-TV.

While attending high school in Presque Isle, Maine, Paul listened to Top-40 radio and participated in track. He played trumpet in the school's stage band where he was introduced to the big band jazz music of Stan Kenton and Maynard Ferguson. He excelled in track, becoming the Maine State champion in five-kilometer distance running, a feat that garnered several scholarship offers, including an offer from Boston College. Having graduated high school with the class of 1983, Paul relocated to Boston, leaving small-town rural life behind. In an interview with Daniel Gewertz of the Boston Herald Paul stated, "It wasn’t until I went to Boston College on a track scholarship that I first heard folk." Paul was particularly moved when he heard Bob Dylan singing "The House of the Rising Sun". It was then that he began to take folk music seriously.

Paul will be inducted into Presque Isle High School Athletic Hall of Fame when induction ceremonies are held on Jan. 11, 2013.