Tom Paley, a Bronx-born singer, guitarist and banjo player who helped spearhead an old-time music revival in the 1950s and ’60s as a founding member of the string band the New Lost City Ramblers, died on Saturday in Brighton, England. He was 89.

His sister, the writer Maggie Paley, said he had been moved to a care facility from his home in London a few weeks ago because of failing health.

Mr. Paley, who also performed as a solo act and collaborated with others, distinguished himself with the Ramblers with humorous antics and virtuosic musicianship alongside the other founding members, the singers and multi-instrumentalists Mike Seeger (a half brother of Pete Seeger) and John Cohen.

In the liner notes to a 1991 retrospective of the trio’s work, the folklorist Jon Pankake called Mr. Paley the trio’s Puck, a performer who was “quintessentially witty, thoroughly urban and intellectual, given to outrageous puns and wordplay, a master teller of jokes, and a breathtaking showman on fingerpicked guitar and banjo.”