Paul Clayton (March 3, 1931 – March 30, 1967) was an American folksinger, guitarist, dulcimer player, author and folk music collector who was prominent in the folk music revival of the 1950s and 1960s.
There is one name that is not well known in the history of the folksong revival beginning in the late 1940s and 1950s. Paul Clayton was a folk music scholar, a collector and field recorder of traditional folksongs primarily from Appalachia and New England, and America’s most-recorded young folksinger – some 17 albums between 1954 and 1961, mostly traditional folk songs and later commercial recordings – bringing hundreds of obscure folk ballads and songs into the American folk music scene. He was a mentor to David Van Ronk, Bob Dylan, and other emerging folksingers of that era, but became eclipsed in the emerging commercial folk scene of the 1960s. He was a genius with many talents, but also many demons that led to his tragic death in 1967 at the age of 36.
Paul Clayton Worthington was born in the whaling town of New Bedford, MA. He grew up hearing songs of the seaman’s life from his grandfather, Paul Hardy, a whaler’s outfitter. From his grandmother, Elizabeth Hardy, he learned songs from Prince Edward Island. As a teenager he began researching old songs when he came upon a collection of original manuscripts of seafaring songs at the New Bedford Whaling Museum. Unencumbered by instruments he sang these songs with the free rhythm of an unaccompanied singer; this led to his odd wayward conversational vocal style, different from that of most other folksingers.
At age eleven Paul was given his first guitar, and in high school he hosted a weekly series of folk programs on New Bedford’s local radio station and later on WBSM. He wrote his own material and sang live music on his program, which was later expanded from a few minutes to one hour per week. The folksong bug had bitten and his folksinging career had begun.
After graduating from New Bedford High School in 1949 he went to the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. There he discovered the university’s Alderman Library with its vast collection of folklore and songs. He was taken under the wing of Professor Arthur Kyle Davis, a foremost folklorist and ballad scholar of the time. Paul completed work for a master’s degree in English and American Folklore. From his youth in New Bedford through his time in Charlottesville, VA, he experienced homosexual tendencies, but these were kept tightly under wraps but later and particularly in Europe, he became more active in gay communities, although many of his close friends still did not realize he was gay.
By 1953 Paul was frequenting the Greenwich Village scene in New York trying to solidify a base for his folk music career. With his plain voice and guitar he was no match for the emerging young folksingers in the Village who would later make it big. His friend Rey Barry characterized him as a “very faithful performer,” but lacking an adorned style to pull a large audience. He went on to record several albums of traditional material for the Folkways, Tradition, Riverside, Electra, Monument, and Stinson labels.
With the surge of new folksingers coming into the city in the late 1950s and early 1960s Paul had the advantage of being there early. He was active near the top of the local scene and was doing radio and TV work not only in the United States, but also in England and Canada. As folksingers were searching for new material to bring into their performances, Paul had the advantage of his wide knowledge of the tradition.
The melody to his song "Who'll Buy You Ribbons When I'm Gone," in turn based on the traditional song "Scarlet Ribbons for Her Hair," provided Bob Dylan with the melody line for "Don't Think Twice, It's Alright," and led to a brief legal skirmish between the two singers in the mid-'60s, which was apparently settled amicably. By the end of 1964 Paul was increasingly drawn into the vortex of the stormy world of Bob Dylan. Paul’s career was at a standstill – he was still getting club gigs but was not on the upturn of the career that he wished for. As a sort of compensation for the disagreement over his song, Dylan invited Paul to accompany him on a cross-country road tour in 1964 to Los Angeles via Chicago.
Paul was despondent that his career was not going anywhere. His friends noticed these changes, but were not able to convince him to seek help as he sunk into a psychotic state. His long struggles with drugs had begun to take their ransom. On March 30, 1967, he was found dead in his bathtub with some sort of electrical appliance. His suicide at age 36 was a shock to everyone, particularly his mother, Adah Worthington, who was very close to him and would never recover from her loss.
Paul was a private person and a gentle soul, not suited for the rough competitive life of a folk star. He could have become a highly-respected academic scholar of folklore and traditional folk music if that was the path he wished to take. His life was cut short by his own despair.
(Edited from the Bob Coltman bio & AllMusic)