Mary Travers, and Peter Paul and Mary

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There is a generation out there that has never heard of Mary Travers, nor of Peter, Paul and Mary.  In fact, there is a large proportion of young people who are not familiar with the genre of Folk, a musical style which has been all but completely co-opted by Christian Gospel, to the dismay of those of us who loved it.

I live in a small town in Pennsylvania, which nevertheless manages to attract a variety of major musical acts, simply because we happen to be on the way from one performing venue to another, and a convenient stop.  (We also have a beautiful theater, in which singers like to perform.)

On one occasion, Peter, Paul and Mary performed here, one night only, and I saw this amazing group live.  Anyone who would like to hear the particular PPM songs that I am most familiar with should get this collection, which has not a single cut that isn't brilliant: Peter, Paul and Mary: 10 years together.  They performed many of these songs at the concert, interspersed with monologues by the three principals, notably Mary Travers.

Evidently PPM was a synthetic band, put together by a music recording executive, or at least that was what I understood from what they said that evening.  (I just read that the responsible party was Albert Grossman, who managed Bob Dylan, and PPM.)  Mary Travers, evidently, was a single mother, who had been singing in various bars in NYC, and whose voice caught the attention of the fellow who had lined up Noel Paul Stookey and Peter Yarrow already.  Whatever the sequence of events, they found themselves singing very well together, accompanied by the two guys, who were able guitarists, and later on by a very talented bassist, Dick Kniss (who passed away earlier this year: 2012).

The talent of the group was to sing rhythmic, harmonically conventional versions of songs written by a variety of other songwriters —covers, as they have come to be called.  In not a few instances, the covers of PPM brought the songs to the public ear faster than the originals; an example is Leaving on a Jet Plane, by John Denver, That's what you get for loving me, by Gordon Lightfoot, and Don't think twice, it's alright, by Bob Dylan.  In other instances, the Peter, Paul and Mary version helped an album of the original artist rise to the top of the charts.  The three musicians have been well trained, classically, though all I have been able to learn about them is that Mary Travers attended the famous Little Red Schoolhouse in NYC, Peter Yarrow graduated from Cornell University, and Noel Paul Stookey graduated from Michigan State.  The arrangements for their songs reveal a sensibility a cut above the level of harmonic intuition required for the basic skill of getting the right chords, which is not difficult.

I have heard Mary Travers sing solo, and in my humble opinion, to my ears she sounded best when driven along by the rhythmic engine which consisted of Yarrow and Stookey.  It is funny to realize that though I think of Peter Paul and Mary as a group whose forte was melody and harmony, one of their greatest assets was their driving rhythm, assisted by the able Mr Kniss.

As a racontress, Mary Travers was inimitable.  She told us a story of her eldest daughter, whom she carried on her hip at rehearsals in her younger days, and how she grew up to marry a Republican.  I loved the way she rambled on, with a big grin, while the Republicans seated all around me squirmed in their seats —this is a strongly Republican area, I have to tell you.

Mary Travers passed away some years ago, and it is clear that the surviving members of the group find it difficult to recapture the magic without the energetic singing of their female accomplice.  She had a voice that could cut through the hubbub of a noisy bar, but still round mellow and musical.  The three of them seemed absolutely equal on stage, none of them appearing to wish to unduly grab the limelight; they seemed a perfect team.  In my mind they were the very model of a perfectly harmonious group.

I wish that the folk music I love so well should get a new lease of life.  I wish that the music of Peter, Paul and Mary would regain some of its popularity and fame.  I wish that the ideals for which they stood should regain their shine: tolerance, a sense of fairness, a sense of urgence about injustice, a sense of connectedness with people everywhere.  And I wish that the legacy of Mary Travers should not die.  She tread lightly on the Earth.

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