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Biography
Paul Chrisman (born August 23, 1949), better known by his stage name Woody Paul, is an American singer, fiddler, and composer, best known for his work with the Western swing musical and comedy group Riders in the Sky. With the Riders, he is billed as "Woody Paul — King of the Cowboy Fiddlers".
Chrisman began playing fiddle when he was 11 years old. He played with Sam McGee and others regularly at the Grand Ole Opry in the mid-sixties. He is also extremely adept at lariat tricks. He attended Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, and has a Ph.D. in theoretical plasma physics from MIT, where he wrote his thesis, "Inertial, Viscous, and Finite-Beta Effects in a Resistive, Time Dependent Tokamak Discharge", Thesis Nuc. Eng. 1976, PhD, supervised by James E. McCune. He returned to Nashville and began playing recording sessions and recorded and toured with Loggins & Messina.
It was in Nashville that he met Douglas B. Green and formed Riders in the Sky.