Mary Travers (1936-2009)

Peter, Paul and Mary sing Lee Hays and Pete Seeger's
progressive anthem "If I Had a Hammer."

"Well, I've got a hammer,
And I've got a bell,
And I've got a song to sing,
All over this land.
It's the hammer of justice,
It's the bell of freedom,
It's the song about love between my brothers and my sisters,
All over this land."

"I was raised to believe that everybody has a responsibility to their community, and I use the word very loosely. It’s a big community. If I get recognized in the middle of the Sinai Desert, I have a big community.”

-- Mary Travers, to the New York Times in 1999
(quoted in William Grimes's NYT obituary)

Paul Stookey, Mary Travers, and Peter Yarrow

A "PUFF" REMINDER

We kicked off the new year with Peter, Paul and Mary singing Peter and Lenny Lipton's "Puff, the Magic Dragon."

Also, thanks to my friend Paul for passing along this amazing photo of PPM. -- Ken


UPDATE: Stirring NY Times Obituary

I grew up listening to Peter, Paul and Mary, and their music was part of the aural fabric of social change that swept America in the 1960s. Mary died yesterday (leukemia) in Connecticut, and today's Times puts her in context, especially for younger people who might not be familiar with her music. -- Howie

Ms. Travers brought a powerful voice and an unfeigned urgency to music that resonated with mainstream listeners. With her straight blond hair and willowy figure and two bearded guitar players by her side, she looked exactly like what she was, a Greenwich Villager directly from the clubs and the coffeehouses that nourished the folk-music revival.

“She was obviously the sex appeal of that group, and that group was the sex appeal of the movement,” said Elijah Wald, a folk-blues musician and a historian of popular music.

Ms. Travers’s voice blended seamlessly with those of her colleagues, Peter Yarrow and Paul Stookey, to create a rich three-part harmony that propelled the group to the top of the pop charts. Their first album, “Peter, Paul and Mary,” which featured the hit singles “Lemon Tree” and “If I Had a Hammer,” reached No. 1 shortly after its release in March 1962 and stayed there for seven weeks, eventually selling more than two million copies.

...Their sound may have been commercial and safe, but early on their politics were somewhat risky for a group courting a mass audience. Like Mr. Yarrow and Mr. Stookey, Ms. Travers was outspoken in her support for the civil-rights and antiwar movements, in sharp contrast to clean-cut folk groups like the Kingston Trio, which avoided making political statements.

Peter, Paul and Mary went on to perform at the 1963 March on Washington and joined the voting-rights marches from Selma to Montgomery, Ala., in 1965.

Over the years they performed frequently at political rallies and demonstrations in the United States and abroad. After the group disbanded, in 1970, Ms. Travers continued to perform at political events around the world as she pursued a solo career.

“They made folk music not just palatable but accessible to a mass audience,” David Hajdu, the author of “Positively Fourth Street,” a book about Mr. Dylan, Joan Baez and their circle, said in an interview. Ms. Travers, he added, was crucial to the group’s image, which had a lot to do with its appeal. “She had a kind of sexual confidence combined with intelligence, edginess and social consciousness-- a potent combination,” he said. “If you look at clips of their performances, the camera fixates on her. The act was all about Mary.”

Mr. Yarrow, in a statement on Wednesday, described Ms. Travers’s singing style as an expression of her character: “honest and completely authentic.”

Mr. Stookey, in an accompanying statement, wrote that “her charisma was a barely contained nervous energy-- occasionally (and then only privately) revealed as stage fright.”

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