Peter, Paul and Mary – The Human Essence

With their distinctive harmony singing and adequate guitar accompaniment, Peter, Paul and Mary became the most commercially successful folk music group of the 1960s, winning five Grammys, releasing two number one albums, six top 10 hits and with John Denvers “Leavin’ on a Jet Plane” also had a number one hit. And as well-known as they were for their music, they were also known for their progressive commitment.

On Tuesday, Peter Yarrow, who suffered from bladder cancer for years, died at his home in New York at the age of 86. Paul Stookey, the group’s only survivor and five months older than Yarrow, described him as his “creative, irrepressible, spontaneous and musical younger brother” who also had “the mature wisdom and inspiring leadership of an older brother.”

Yarrow was born in New York in 1938 to Jewish immigrants from Ukraine and later attended Cornell University, where he earned a degree in psychology but also taught folk music classes and learned to play the violin and guitar. And realized that the United States and the world were on the verge of major changes and that folk music was a fitting soundtrack to it. Soon he was singing in Greenwich Village clubs and in 1960 at the famous Newport Folk Festival. There he met the colorful music manager Albert Grossman, who suggested that he form a folk group similar to the Weavers from the 50s: The Birth of Peter, Paul and Mary.

They mainly sang traditionals and adaptations, but occasionally also their own songs. Here Yarrow was the most creative, writing songs like “The Great Mandala” about a peace activist on hunger strike, “Day is Done” about the hope for a fairer world and the children’s (or perhaps drug song?) “Puff, the Magic Dragon”.

The group provided musical accompaniment to the African American civil rights movement, singing at the March on Washington in 1963 and at the marches in Alabama in 1965. When they heard Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech in Washington in 1963, Travers said to Yarrow: ” Peter, we are living through history.” There they also sang Bob Dylan’s “Blowin’ in the Wind” and helped not only to make Dylan better known, but also to make the song an anthem of the civil rights movement. The record sold two million copies!

Yarrow also helped mobilize concerts against the US war in Vietnam, including a (nother) march on Washington with half a million people in 1969 and a festival at Shea Stadium in New York in 1970. The group suddenly disbanded that same year. Especially because Peter Yarrow was on trial for sexually molesting a 14-year-old and had to go to prison for three months. Ten years later, President Carter pardoned him.

All three now pursued solo careers and only reunited sporadically, especially before US elections, where they supported left-wing candidates from the Democratic Party. Yarrow released four solo albums.

In 2009, Mary Travers died of leukemia. Peter now founded a new trio together with his daughter Bethany Yarrow and the cellist Rufus Cappadocia. He also continued to be politically active, for example for Occupy Wall Street in the 10s.

In 2008, Yarrow told Reuters: “We had a huge audience, some of whom disagreed with our policies. But they were touched by the human essence of our songs.«