Best of the Vanguard Years

Paxton's prime as a recording artist was spent on Elektra, not Vanguard. But Vanguard has managed to assemble a best-of for his slim output by taking most of the late-'70s albums he did on the label and adding a half-dozen live songs from the 1963 and 1964 Newport Folk Festivals. Those performances are going to be the tracks that attract most interest, particularly since all but one ("The Willing Conscript," from the 1963 festival) are previously unreleased. The five unissued cuts are all from the 1964 festival, and include some of his best songs: "Bottle of Wine," "The Last Thing on My Mind," "Ramblin' Boy," and "Lyndon Johnson Told the Nation." Paxton sounds a little more relaxed, perhaps due to the live setting, than he was on some of his Elektra studio efforts of the period. Pete Seeger adds some banjo and harmony vocal. All but one song ("Bring Back the Chair") from his live-in-the-studio 1977 album New Songs from the Briarpatch follow, after which we hear all but two songs from his 1978 album Heroes. The late-'70s material is convivial, mild folk-rock without much bite or edge. Steve Goodman plays acoustic guitar and does background vocals on New Songs from the Briarpatch, and Eric Weissberg is the backing musician of note for the more full-bodied arrangements of Heroes. Paxton's style and concerns had changed relatively little in the intervening dozen-plus years since the Newport fests, addressing contemporary topical issues that launched few specific commentaries in song (like Watergate, Anita Bryant's anti-gay campaign, and the death of Stephen Biko) and comedy ("You Can Eat Dog Food").