Mary Travers of Peter, Paul and Mary dies
Last Updated: Wednesday, September 16, 2009 | 10:04 PM ET
The Associated Press
Mary Travers of the folk trio Peter, Paul and Mary poses with fellow band members Paul Stookey (left) and Peter Yarrow (right) in Los Angeles in 1965. Travers died of leukemia Wednesday. (Associated Press) Mary Travers, one-third of the hugely popular 1960s folk trio Peter, Paul and Mary, has died at age 72 after a battle with leukemia.
The band's publicist, Heather Lylis, said Travers died at Danbury Hospital in Connecticut on Wednesday. She was 72 and had battled the cancer for several years.
Travers joined forces with Peter Yarrow and Noel Paul Stookey in the early 1960s.
The trio mingled their music with liberal politics, both onstage and off. Their version of If I Had a Hammer became an anthem for racial equality. Other hits included Lemon Tree, Leaving on a Jet Plane and Puff (The Magic Dragon).
They were early champions of Bob Dylan and performed his Blowin' in the Wind at the August 1963 March on Washington.
And they were vehement in their opposition to the Vietnam War, managing to stay true to their liberal beliefs while creating music that resonated in the American mainstream.
Biggest stars of folk revival movement
The group collected five Grammy Awards for their songs in three-part harmony. At one point in 1963, three of their albums were in the top six Billboard best-selling LPs as they became the biggest stars of the folk revival movement.
Mary Travers, flanked by Paul Stookey (left) and Peter Yarrow, arrives at the 2006 Songwriters Hall of Fame induction ceremony in New York. (Stephen Chernin/Associated Press) It was heady stuff for a trio that had formed in the early 1960s in Greenwich Village, running through simple tunes like Mary Had a Little Lamb.
They debuted at the Bitter End in 1961, and their beatnik look — a tall blond flanked by a pair of goateed guitarists — was a part of their initial appeal. As the New York Times critic Robert Shelton put it not long afterward, "Sex appeal as a keystone for a folk-song group was the idea of the group's manager, Albert B. Grossman, who searched for months for 'the girl' until he decided on Miss Travers."
Their debut album came out in 1962, and the trio immediately scored a pair of hits with their versions of If I Had a Hammer and Lemon Tree. The former won them Grammys for best folk recording and best performance by a vocal group.
Moving was the follow-up, including the hit tale of innocence lost, Puff (The Magic Dragon), which reached No. 2 on the charts and generated since-discounted reports that it was an ode to marijuana.
Helped bring Dylan to broader audience
Album No. 3, In the Wind, featured three songs by the 22-year-old Dylan. Don't Think Twice, It's Alright and Blowin' in the Wind both reached the Top 10, bringing Dylan's material to a massive audience. The latter shipped 300,000 copies during one two-week period.
Blowin' In the Wind became another civil rights anthem, and Peter, Paul and Mary fully embraced the cause. They marched with Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. in Selma, Ala., and performed with him in Washington.
In a 1966 New York Times interview, Travers said the three worked well together because they respected one another.
"There has to be a certain amount of love just in order for you to survive together," she said. "I think a lot of groups have gone down the tubes because they were not able to relate to one another."
With the advent of the Beatles and Dylan's switch to electric guitar, the folk boom disappeared. Travers expressed disdain for folk-rock, telling the Chicago Daily News in 1966 that "it's so badly written.… When the fad changed from folk to rock, they didn't take along any good writers."
But the trio continued their success, scoring with the tongue-in-cheek single I Dig Rock and Roll Music, a gentle parody of the Mamas and the Papas, in 1967 and the John Denver-penned Leaving on a Jet Plane two years later.
They also continued as boosters for young songwriters, recording numbers written by then-little-known Gordon Lightfoot and Laura Nyro.
In 1969, the group earned their final Grammy for Peter, Paul and Mommy, which won for best children's album. They disbanded in 1971, launching solo careers — Travers released five albums — that never achieved the heights of their collaborations.
Over the years they enjoyed several reunions, including a performance at a 1978 anti-nuclear benefit organized by Yarrow and a 35th anniversary album, Lifelines, with fellow folkies Ramblin' Jack Elliott, Dave Van Ronk and Pete Seeger. A boxed set of their music was released in 2004.
