Rolling Stone Patrick Sky, Folk Singer and Bob Dylan Contemporary, Dead at 80
Member of the Sixties Greenwich Village folk scene, Sky released acclaimed satirical LP
Songs That Made America Famous in 1973
By Timothy Duffy
Patrick Sky, a member of the Sixties Greenwich Village folk scene that launched Bob Dylan, Dave Van Ronk, and many others, died on May 27th in Asheville, North Carolina. Sky had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in 2017, but according to his wife, folklorist and musician Cathy Larson Sky, Sky succumbed to prostate cancer and bone cancer. He was 80.
“Pat is one of the best story-tellers I know,” his friend and neighbor Van Ronk wrote in the liner notes to Sky’s 1965 self-titled debut album. “This is probably why he’s such a great singer. His songs are like he is honest and sentimental, absurd and bawdy, indignant and simple to the point of complexity.” In the liner notes of his 1985 box set