The banjo impresario Frank Fairfield describes Jerron "Blind Boy" Paxton as "the face of God" on a guitar. When the two played together recently at The Redwood in downtown L.A., Fairfield remarked, "I’m the third wheel with him. He’s the first two all by himself."

All of 20 years old, Paxton hails from southern California but one could be forgiven for assuming that he spent his formative years in southern Mississippi. As a child, Paxton spent long afternoons on his grandmother's piano and developed a fondness for pre-War American music. Now he plays banjo, 5- and 6-string guitar, as well as piano, and he stalks the stage with a world-weary gate, relying on his white cane to lead.

On the evening that this video was shot, Paxton was playing the Jalopy Theater in the Red Hook section of Brooklyn. The Jalopy is a true mom and pop operation that is part music venue, part guitar repair shop, and part community center. In this episode of Site & Sound, Paxton plays a ragtime classic titled "Police Dog Blues." The song was originally recorded in 1929 by the "King of Ragtime Guitar," Blind Blake, who, like Paxton, was legally blind.