Peter, Paul and Mary

The death a few weeks ago of Mary Travers saddened me tremendously. It wasn't a surprise, as I knew she had cancer, but hearing the news hit me hard anyway. I've been a Peter, Paul and Mary fan ever since I can remember. Songs like "Lemon Tree" and "Puff the Magic Dragon," and "If I Had a Hammer" are embedded in my consciousness, surely having heard them while I was in diapers.

Peter, Paul and Mary, much like The Monkees a few years later, were much better than they should have been. Put together by Albert Grossman, who was Bob Dylan's manager, they were assembled with an eye for aesthetics. Peter Yarrow was the good-looking guy, (Noel) Paul Stookey was the funny guy, and Mary Travers was the beautiful girl. They played coffeehouse folk, and though they had the outward trappings of the beatnik culture, they were clean cut and all-American.

Folk music was big back then in the early sixties. The trio covered mainstays like Dylan, Woody Guthrie, and Pete Seeger, and unlike those fellows, they were easily palatable to older folks, while also being credible for the young. They were well versed in the traditions of leftie folk songs, but also contemporary and youthful.

Mary, usually standing between the two guys, had a regal bearing even while her blonde main of hair shook to the beat. Her voice was crystal clear, and usually most effective as a plaintive lament. Her vocal on Dylan's "Blowin' in the Wind" is so wrenching that it can't be listened to passively. And in two songs about leaving a lover, "500 Miles" and "Leaving on a Jet Plane" her voice is heartbreak in sound. The latter, written by John Denver, was the trio's only number one hit.

Peter, Paul and Mary were very much of a time. Folk slowly died out following the British invasion. Stookey's song "I Dig Rock and Roll Music," while outwardly a jokey send-up of rock and roll, comes off as bitter and whiny to me--as if to suggest that music that didn't have some sort of political message was a waste of time.

I saw Peter, Paul and Mary in concert in the mid-eighties, sitting in the last row of a big Broadway theater, and had a great time. Though Mary is gone too soon their legacy will live on through the music, which though representative of a time long gone will never truly go out of style.