I’ll say this about records: Pesky MFers! Sad about the death of Mary Travers–the “Mary” of Peter, Paul and Mary–I dug out my PPM records last night for a tribute evening. I say “my” PPM records, but they were first my mom’s; her maiden name is scrawled on each album jacket in a tentative cursive.
Odds that any music I bought in high school will someday be listened to by a 32-year-old son of mine: 75,000 to 1. Or way more likely than the chances of Seth Jr. someday possessing any of the e-music I’ve purchased since–which certainly won’t have my name scribbled on it. Kind of a bummer, really.
Mary Travers was the voice of mom’s teenager-hood, and later my childhood, emanating from the same records I’m listening to as I write this. Her gentle voice and gorgeous face lent a femininity that helped make Peter, Paul and Mary, for a time, the most popular musical group in America.
They aren’t remembered as such now, having been consigned to the largely-ignored “folk” category, but in November of 1963, three PPM albums were in the Billboard top ten. They played at the 1963 Civil Rights March on Washington, for Christ’s sake.
Then The Beatles came and owned popular music the rest of the decade, and now even oldies stations don’t play Peter, Paul and Mary.
My mom played them all the time; easing me in with PPM’s 1969 children’s album “Peter, Paul and Mommy,” then the group’s more adult work.
My childhood friend Dave was also PPM-raised. In high school Dave and I formed a folk-ish duo called “Spackled Yams,” playing songs we composed late at night in his basement. Silly songs, but always, always containing harmony. When The Rocket required us to create a 10-word band description for our spot in their annual music listings, I came up with this: “Peter, Paul and Mary with more hair and less Mary.”
The upshot of all this PPM influence has been a lifelong appreciation for harmony. If I was therefore the only straight man in my college class who knew all the words to an Indigo Girls song, it was the price I happily paid.
Current local harmony fix: The Dutchess and the Duke–childhood friends like Dave and I–make some pretty sweet sounds together.
Mary Travers, Peter Yarrow and Noel “Paul” Stookey were not childhood friends. Albert Grossman, who you can imagine as a sort-of P. Diddy of folk, put the three together. The trio’s first three albums went to #1, #2, and #1, respectively, on the Billboard charts. Their next eight albums all cracked the top 25, at which point they disbanded to pursue solo careers. Didn’t work out so well, so they got back together in 1978, sporadically recording and touring since.
Travers was 72; she died of complications from cancer treatment, according to The New York Times.