R.I.P. Mary Travers

Mary Travers, the Mary in Peter, Paul & Mary, passed away today at age 72 after a long battle with leukemia.

Peter, Paul and Mary were a folk power trio with a huge run of top ten hits throughout the sixties, giving commericial viabilty to a music which had long been confined to coffeehouses.

The group was the high-concept brainchild of uber-manager Albert Grossman, who also managed an alley-cat voiced singer-songwriter named Bob Dylan. Grossman fed songs from the young genius songwriter to the pretty sounding folk trio and converted them into chart-toppers, getting paid twice in the process. When the group toured Florida, they were forbidden to get tans by Grossman, for fear of tarnishing their pale Village-Bohemian image.

Though they covered many of Dylan's tunes, "Blowin' in the Wind" was by far the biggest, and their huge hit was a career maker for Dylan as well. Pretty soon, everyone was covering his tunes.



Personally, I find their version of "Blowin'" a little too solemn for my taste. But as this clip of Pete Seeger's "If I Had a Hammer" shows, Peter, Paul & Mary could be pretty compelling when they decide to rock it out a bit:


Looking around YouTube at the plethora of vintage PP&M clips, I came across a gem called "Jane Jane" with New Testament lyrics and some strong vocals by the late Ms. Travers:


Here they are doing a spirited version of the Rev. Gary Davis's "If I Had My Way," which the Grateful Dead covered as well as "Samson & Delilah":


I met Ms. Travers very briefly in the 1980s when I was a student at the University of Connecticut and she was as an honored guest for some sort of world peace rally. It was nice to see she was still walking the walk so many years later.

To take things out, here are Peter, Paul & Mary doing "Leaving on a Jet Plane" by John Denver, who actually did leave us on a jet plane. RIP & TCB MT.