Thomas "Pae-dog" McEvoy

Thomas "Pae-dog" McEvoy (December 19, 1947 – November 30, 1987) was a fringe member of Funkadelic and one of the most influential jazz horn players of the 1980s. Born in Islington, Alabama, he graduated from the Juilliard School of Music with honors and taught jazz horn for several years, alongside work with his band Ohm Vasectomy, who although largely forgotten today were a key influence on the Avant-funk movement. In the late 1970s McEvoy received a call from renegade P-Funk member Fuzzy Haskins, asking him to lend his horn stylings to the 1981 album Connections & Disconnections.

This was to be McEvoy's only appearance on a Funkadelic record, as he fell out with Haskins after a dispute over the relative merits of "P-Funk" and McEvoy's own "Pae-Funk", as well as over McEvoy's stated intent to get a funk band to play rock music. He died in 1987 from AIDS after contracting HIV from his longtime girlfriend. In addition to his musical career, he left behind a body of work as an author (under the nom de plume Virginia Van Der Veer Hamilton), including a history of Alabama and a well-received treatise on reincarnation.