Peter, Paul and Mary were a United States folk-singing trio whose nearly 50-year career began with their rise to become a paradigm for 1960s folk music. The trio was composed of folk song writer Peter Yarrow, (Noel) Paul Stookey and Mary Travers. After the death of Mary Travers in 2009, Yarrow and Stookey continued to perform as a duo under their individual names. Manager Albert Grossman created Peter, Paul and Mary in 1961, after auditioning several singers in the New York folk scene, including Dave Van Ronk, who was rejected as too idiosyncratic and uncommercial. After rehearsing Yarrow, Stookey and Travers out of town in Boston and Miami, Grossman booked them into The Bitter End, a coffee house, nightclub and popular folk music venue in New York Citys Greenwich Village. They recorded their first self-titled debut album, Peter, Paul and Mary, the following year. It included Lemon Tree, 500 Miles, 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. 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. That year the group performed If I Had a Hammer and Blowin in the Wind 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; Dont Think Twice, Its All Right and When the Ship Comes In. Their success with Dylans Dont Think Twice, Its All Right helped Dylans The Freewheelin Bob Dylan album rise into the Top 30; it had been released four months earlier. On January 14, 1964 they performed Blowin in the Wind on the Jack Benny television program. 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 groups friend John Denver. It was the groups sixth 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.
Posted on: Mon, 07 Jul 2014 00:07:49 +0000
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