OHR Presents: Jerron “Blind Boy” Paxton

Ozark Highlands Radio is a weekly radio program that features live music and interviews recorded at Ozark Folk Center State Park’s beautiful 1,000-seat auditorium in Mountain View, Arkansas. In addition to the music, our “Feature Host” segments take listeners through the Ozark hills with historians, authors, and personalities who explore the people, stories, and history of the Ozark region. This week, old time blues, jazz, & traditional music prodigy Jerron “Blind Boy” Paxton performs live at the Ozark Folk Center State Park in Mountain View, Arkansas. Also, interviews with Jerron. Jerron "Blind Boy" Paxton is an American musician from Los Angeles. A vocalist and multi-instrumentalist, Paxton's style draws from blues and jazz music before World War II and was influenced by Fats Waller and "Blind" Lemon Jefferson. According to Will Friedwald in the Wall Street Journal, Paxton is "virtually the only music-maker of his generation—playing guitar, banjo, piano and violin, among other implements—to fully assimilate the blues idiom of the 1920s and '30s, the blues of Bessie Smith and Lonnie Johnson.” In this week’s “From the Vault” segment, musician, educator, and country music legacy Mark Jones offers an archival recording of Ozark legend Bookmiller Shannon performing the traditional murder ballad “The Banks of the Ohio,” from the Ozark Folk Center State Park archives. From his series entitled “Fine Fiddlers of the Ozarks,” old time and Ozark fiddle aesthete Roy Pilgrim profiles traditional Ozark fiddler Absie Morrison. This installment features archival recordings of the traditional Ozark fiddle tunes “Dry & Dusty, The Concord March, and The Ozark Waltz.”