Where are they now? – American folk-singing trio – Peter, Paul and Mary
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Peter, Paul and Mary were an American folk-singing trio who ultimately became one of the biggest acts of the 1960s. The trio was composed of Peter Yarrow, Paul Stookey, and Mary Travers.
Mary Travers mentions she was influenced by Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, and the Weavers. In the documentary Peter, Paul & Mary: Carry It On — A Musical Legacy members of The Weavers discuss how Peter, Paul and Mary took over the torch of the social commentary of folk music in the 1960s. The group paid tribute to some of their folk mentors and contemporaries in their "Lifeline Concert" in 2004.
Manager Albert Grossman created Peter, Paul and Mary in 1961, after auditioning several singers in the New York folk scene. After rehearsing them out of town in Miami, Grossman booked them into The Bitter End, a coffee house and popular folk music venue in New York City’s Greenwich Village.
They recorded their first album, Peter, Paul and Mary, the following year. It included "500 Miles", "Lemon Tree", and the Pete Seeger hit tunes "If I Had a Hammer" (subtitled "(The Hammer Song)") and "Where Have All the Flowers Gone?".
The album was listed in the Billboard Magazine Top Ten for 10 months, including seven weeks in the #1 position. It remained a main catalog-seller for decades to come, eventually selling over two million copies, earning Double Platinum certification from the RIAA in the United States alone.
The group made its television debut in either 1961 or 1962 on the PM East/PM West talk show hosted by Mike Wallace and Joyce Davidson.[citation needed] By 1963, Peter, Paul and Mary had recorded three albums.
All three were in the Top Ten the week of President Kennedy’s assassination.
In 1963 the group also released "Puff the Magic Dragon", with music by Yarrow and words based on a poem that had been written by a fellow student at Cornell, Leonard Lipton.
Despite urban myths that insist the song is filled with drug references, it is actually about the lost innocence of childhood. On January 14, 1964 they performed on the Jack Benny television program, with the Bob Dylan song "Blowin’ In the Wind".
That year the group performed "If I Had a Hammer" at the 1963 March on Washington, best remembered for Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr.’s "I Have a Dream" speech. One of their biggest hit singles was the Bob Dylan song "Blowin’ in the Wind". They also sang other Bob Dylan songs, such as: "The Times They Are a-Changin’"; "Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right"; and "When the Ship Comes In", perhaps their most memorable piece.
Their manager, Albert Grossman, was also Dylan’s manager. Their success with Dylan’s "Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right" aided Dylan’s "The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan" album into the Top 30. (It had been released four months earlier.)
"Leaving On A Jet Plane" became their only #1 hit (as well as their final Top 40 Pop hit) in December 1969, and was written by the group’s friend John Denver. It was the group’s only million-selling Gold single.
The track first appeared on their million-selling Platinum certified Album 1700 in 1967 (which also contained their #9 hit "I Dig Rock and Roll Music"). "Day Is Done", a #21 hit in June 1969, was the last Hot 100 hit that the trio recorded.
The trio broke up in 1970 to pursue solo careers, but found little of the success which they had experienced as a group—although Stookey’s "The Wedding Song (There is Love)" (written for Yarrow’s marriage to Marybeth McCarthy, the niece of senator Eugene McCarthy) was a hit and has become a wedding standard since its 1971 release.
In 1978, they reunited for a concert to protest nuclear energy, and continued to record albums together and tour, playing around 45 shows a year, until the 2009 death of Mary Travers.
The Peter, Paul and Mary trio came to an end on September 16, 2009, when Mary Travers died at age 72 of complications from chemotherapy, following treatment for leukemia.
It was the same year (2009) they were inducted into the Hit Parade Hall of Fame.
Video – Peter Paul & Mary – Puff the Magic Dragon
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