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Gary Sanford Paxton (born May 18, 1939) is an American record producer, and a Grammy Award and Dove Award winning songwriter and recording artist. ==Biography== Born in Coffeyville, Kansas, Paxton was adopted at age three and raised in rural poverty on a farm. He endured a troubled childhood, molested at age seven and afflicted by spinal meningitis at eleven. His family moved to Arizona when he was twelve, and he started his first band by fourteen, playing country and rock 'n' roll. He spent his middle teenage years touring the American Southwest with this and other forgotten bands. Early stardom came as "Flip" in the pop duo Skip & Flip (with Clyde "Skip" Battin), courtesy of a million-selling 1959 smash the two cut in Phoenix, Arizona, "It Was I".〔 In what became a pattern in Paxton's early career, the song was recorded first and the group assembled second: after successfully shopping their demo to a label owner, Gary became "Flip" and Clyde became "Skip", after the man's pet poodles, a "group" put together just to have a name on the record. According to Paxton, he was up picking cherries on an Oregon farm when he heard the song on a transistor radio and realized it had become a hit.〔 The duo made television appearances, toured with superstar deejay Alan "Moondog" Freed, and soon followed their success with another hit, "Cherry Pie". After this second chart appearance, the pair split up.〔 By 1960, Paxton was living in Hollywood, California. A natural workaholic with an entrepreneurial verve, he had his hand in a number of projects, collaborating with others on the local scene as a performer, writer, producer, label owner, and audio engineer. He played a major role in the making of two novelty hits in the early '60s and worked with artists like The Association, Paul Revere & the Raiders, The Four Freshmen, and Tommy Roe — over one thousand groups in total.〔 His work throughout this early-'60s period is scattered over countless labels, mostly his own, which he seemed to open and close on a constant basis, making regular use of the five studios he owned but rarely staying put.〔〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=A Small Partial List of Musical Credentials )〕 Over the years, working in this manner, Paxton built a reputation as an eccentric, quixotic figure in the recording industry, a talented and elusive jack-of-all-trades.〔 Brian Wilson was known to admire his talents, and Phil Spector to fear him.〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Hollywood Maverick - The Gary S. Paxton Story )〕 His creativity and knack for promotion were legendary, but could also run to excess: once, after a local radio station dismissed one of his records ("Elephant Game (Part One)" by Renfro & Jackson) as "too black", he assembled a protest parade down Hollywood Boulevard in Los Angeles, California, consisting of fifteen cheerleaders and a live elephant pulling a Volkswagen convertible; he was arrested after the elephant got scared and began to defecate in the street.〔 Operating out of Los Angeles, Paxton worked in all his capacities with many artists and labels in the pop-music industry for the next half decade, but in the later '60s, he gradually turned to the burgeoning Bakersfield sound in country music. By 1967, he had relocated entirely to that dusty inner-California city (Bakersfield, California), where he ran a variety of businesses and founded the influential label Bakersfield International.〔 Amidst personal loss and troubles, he moved on again, to Nashville, Tennessee, in 1970, and in 1971, following his partner's suicide and his own long struggles with drugs and alcohol, he converted to Christianity after wandering into a church stoned.〔 He quickly turned his talents to gospel music, becoming part of the hippie countercultural Jesus movement, and has worked in gospel ever since, while maintaining an interest in country. On December 29, 1980, Paxton was shot three times by hitmen hired by a country singer he was producing, putting him out of the music world for eight years and nearly ending his life. After the trial, he visited the men in prison and forgave them.〔 Later in the decade, he was romantically linked in the press with the prominent televangelist Tammy Faye Bakker, whose musical efforts he had produced; Her infatuation with Paxton was accounted by the Washington Post and other media as a possible cause of (her then-husband) Jim Bakker's affair in that same period. Paxton left Nashville in 1999 and currently lives in Branson, Missouri, with his fourth wife, Vicki Sue Roberts. He suffers from hepatitis C and almost died from the disease in 1990, but continues to write and is still working on several projects at his Missouri home.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Gary S. Paxton」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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