Jerron Paxton

Queen’s Hall 24/7/26

Jerron Paxton

Jerron Paxton was a new discovery for me and, as a fan of early jazz and ragtime, I was keen to explore a versatility that ‘moves effortlessly between blues, folk, ragtime and early jazz’. The Queen’s Hall was set up café style with a capacity audience. Ten minutes in and still waiting, a stage hand came on with water and what looked like a glass of whisky, followed swiftly by Jerron carrying two banjos. His initial greeting ‘Hey, friends, how y’all doing?’ immediately established his rapport with the audience. From there he moved effortlessly into story telling with musical accompaniment. Such were his charms and engagement that we didn’t even mind when he described us as grey-haired PC – glossed as Paranoid Caucasians.

Jerron began with a blues number on acoustic guitar with lyrics about homelessness: ‘Lay me down a padding on your floor […] when I got no place to go.' This was one of several examples of blues given a contemporary relevance. The next song ‘How I got Over’, was inspired by songs his grandma used to sing, his interpretation infused with elements of gospel. His casual asides regularly raised a laugh: ‘Can’t get ahead, just got to get over’. His grandparents moved from Louisiana to California in 1953 and Paxton was influenced by his roots in Cajun and country blues.

He then switched to banjo for an instrumental with an upbeat tempo and rapid intricate picking patterns. With my ears tuned to Scottish folk tunes, I detected similarities in the repetition of rhythms and melodic phrases. He had two banjos, one a Boucher made in 1855 by one of the earliest and most influential makers of this instrument. It had a deeper richer sound to accompany the song ‘Green Corn’ by Leadbelly. While he tuned the instrument, we enjoyed a somewhat risqué tale about his great grandfather, who was a straight shooter: dispatching militiamen who tried to evict him from his legally bought property and also fathering 500 descendants.

In a short interlude on mouth organ, Jerron produced all the sounds of the historic Santa Fe and Texas Midland railroads, from mournful whistles to the rhythm of the tracks and the hissing of brakes. At the end his comment was that no drugs are needed to get high as a giraffe’s back(side), just three minutes of that kind of mouth organ playing to deprive yourself of oxygen.

We began to appreciate just how versatile Jerron is when he switched to piano for a jazz song by Jelly Roll Morton, ‘Michigan Water Blues’, with lyrics contrasting Michigan wine, tasting like sherry, and Mississippi wine, tasting like turpentine. The second piano number was ‘The Very Thought of You’ by Ray Noble. Jerron gave this a bouncy treatment alternating lyrics and piano solo, quite different from the ballad of Nat King Cole.

The final set before the interval was on fiddle. Jerron commented that playing fiddle in Scotland was like bringing a hamburger to a banquet and indeed the tunes, whose names are legion but not remembered by him, sounded similar to Scots fiddle tunes.

The second half mirrored the first with blues on guitar and banjo, including one of his own composition about falling out of love. The final song on piano was another classic from 1915: ‘I ain’t got nobody; nobody cares for me’. However, he interspersed this with improvisation around the lyrics: ‘Nothing makes you feel so low as an ugly woman who tells you , no.’ By this time, the PC audience were prepared to forgive the implied misogyny and just enjoy the banter and the music.