Paul Roth is a retired engineering scientist, whose professional career comprised positions in high-tech industry, Federal Government, consulting and academia. Professionally, he is retired from the computer science faculty of Virginia Tech. A graduate of McKeesport, PA, High School, he holds degrees from the University of Pittsburgh (Physics) and the University of Pennsylvania (Engineering).

Apart from his profession, he has had life-long interest in American pop culture topics, such as popular music, theater and photography.
Paul is a recognized authority on American popular music. He has compiled and maintained an extensive personal archive of recordings, films and literature. He has experience in both broadcasting and personal appearances presenting musical programs. His archive has been accessed by the Smithsonian and Carnegie Institutions.

His record collection is now Stanford University’s Paul F. Roth Collection of the American Dance Band.

He is a distinguished member of the Board of Directors of the Sarasota Music Archive.

He has had experience in compiling music and writing biographical liner notes for prominent CD manufacturers.

In the broadcasting arena, he has produced and hosted weekly programs on both commercial and public radio; both on AM and FM stations:

• “Sweet Swing on Sunday,” ran weekly over a four-year span (1980-84) on AM in Washington, DC. It had a role in returning so-called “Big Band Radio” to this market.
• “Big Bands, Jazz, and Nostalgia,” was aired in 1987-88 on FM (public radio) in Tampa, FL.
• “Retro Radio,” a popular music program aired weekly (1999-2002) on AM in Sarasota, FL, as did:
• “Forum 55”, a Sarasota senior topics interview/talk program.

On TV, he produced and hosted “Remembering the Big Bands” on a Sarasota cable station in 1998 and 1999. It has been re-run occasionally on Pittsburgh, PA’s Channel 21 as a feature of the program “More Than Just Learning.”

He was cited in “Billboard” in 1981 for an extended series of programs devoted to his collection of big band theme songs, which at that time reached over 200. At last count it had reached over 400.

A serious musicologist, he has been involved in producing and presenting various educational programs on popular music:

Programs and classes for Sarasota Music Archive, Ringling Museum, and the adult education programs of Carnegie-Mellon University, University of Pittsburgh, and the Longboat Key Adult Education Institute and the world-wide “Elderhostel” program.

In 2010, he lectured at the Chautauqua Institution on the history of the popular song.

He also provided a daily series of lectures on an ACCL cruise boat.

In 1997, he was invited by Florida Atlantic University to develop an adult education course on the history of the American popular song.

From 1979 to 1996 he recorded many so-called “oral histories”: taped, on-location interviews with bandleaders and other important contributors to American popular music, ranging from Sammy Kaye to Steve Allen.

Paul Roth has also had a wide range of personal appearance/theatrical/performance experience. He has been a comedic character singer/actor in community theater, where he has also directed and coached staged play-readings.

He has played various musical instruments (soprano and alto sax; clarinet; bass clarinet, baritone horn, banjo, ukulele) and sung with two self-organized “Roarin’ Twenties-style” combinations.

In literary matters, he has authored or co-authored articles for Western Pennsylvania History Magazine and Signatures.