“Blind Boy” Paxton • Blues

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BLIND BOY PAXTON
SUNDAY, OCTOBER 18, 2015
5:00 PM
CHESTER MEETING HOUSE

About Blind Boy Paxton

Although only in his 20s, Jerron “Blind Boy” Paxton has earned a reputation for transporting audiences back to the 1920s and making them wish they could stay there for good. This young musician sings and plays banjo, guitar, piano, fiddle, harmonica, Cajun accordion and the bones (percussion) with an eerie ability to transform traditional jazz, blues, folk and country into the here and now, and make it real.

He was born in 1989 in the Watts district of Los Angeles, where his extended family had moved from Louisiana. His southern roots would have a strong influence on him. As a youngster he spent time listening to his hometown blues radio station, as well as the old Cajun and country blues songs his grandmother used to sing. He began playing the fiddle when he was 12, picking up the banjo two years later. Since his childhood, he has added multiple other instruments although the banjo was his first serious instrument. As a teenager he was diagnosed as having central retinal degeneration, losing most of his eyesight by the age of 16, leading to his stage name of Blind Boy Paxton.

In 2007, Mr. Paxton moved to upstate New York to attend Marist College in Poughkeepsie. Finding that he was spending most of his time playing the piano, he moved to Brooklyn. He became part of the music scene at the Jalopy Theater, where he met and played with many of the blues and jazz musicians who helped him find gigs that started him on his professional career. He transferred to the New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music in Greenwich Village but left after two years, finding that he wanted to concentrate on early jazz and blues – his real musical heritage.

Recognition of his prodigious talent led Mr. Paxton to be named Artistic Director of the Port Townsend Acoustic Blues Workshop and Festival in 2014, where he performs as well as teaches. His growing reputation led Living Blues magazine in December 2012 to place him on the cover of their issue entitled “The Next Generation of the Acoustic Blues.”

Program will be announced from the stage.
There will be one intermission.

At the conclusion of the program, members of the audience are invited to meet Mr. Paxton and share refreshments generously donated by Simon’s Marketplace.