Last Thing On My Mind, The

DESCRIPTION: "It's a lesson to late for the learning, Made of sand, made of sand." "Are you going away with no word of farewell.... Well, I could have loved you better, didn't mean to be unkind, You know that was the last thing on my mind." Of lost love and regret
AUTHOR: Tom Paxton
EARLIEST DATE: 1964 (recording, Tom Paxton)
KEYWORDS: love separation nonballad
FOUND IN: Canada(Newf)
REFERENCES (1 citation):
DT, LASTMIND*
NOTES [206 words]: There isn't much evidence that this song became traditional, but Cox-FolkMusicInANewfoundlandOutport, p. 186, says that Harry Mercer of Newfoundland knew it and sang it, with evidence of oral modification, so I put it in here very tentatively.
To be sure, Tom Paxton, on p. 31 of The Honor of Your Company (edited and with an introduction by Milton Okun; Cherry Lane Music, 2000) says that people in both Ireland and Scotland have thought it was traditional (which, Paxton declares, "suits me right down to the ground") -- but that isn't a field collection.
It is almost certainly Paxton's best-known song, though; he says it has been translated into French, German, Norwegian, and Croatian (at least).
He also says that it arose out of discovering a trick for hammering a C note into a G chord on the guitar, and was written just days before he recorded it.
I find it interesting that Tom Paxton has, as of this writing, five songs in the Index -- "The Marvelous Toy," "The Last Thing on My Mind," "My Ramblin' Boy," "Going to the Zoo," and "I Can't Help But Wonder Where I'm Bound" -- and all were written and recorded very early in his career. Nor have I seen any hints of any of his later songs matching those five in popularity. - RBW
Last updated in version 6.3
File: DTlastmi

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