Remembering Mary
by Jason Killian MeathThe music world lost a mighty voice. Mary Travers died of cancer at the age of 72. She was the female component of the folk trio Peter Paul and Mary, a group who helped provide the soundtrack to Vietnam war protests and the civil rights movements in the 1960’s. The singing group’s brand of political activism took a kinder, gentler form — and was far more effective — than the disorganized hate-speak and anger antics of many artists on stage today.
National Mall, Washington, D.C. August 1963 Peter, Paul and Mary sing the Bob Dylan song “Blowin’ in the Wind” at the civil rights March on Washington. The lyrics say, “The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind,” and on this day the wind carried Dr. Martin Luther King’s historic speech to the ears of the entire nation. (One of over 200 photos in “Hollywood on the Potomac“)
![PP&M[1]](http://bighollywood.breitbart.com/files/2009/09/PPM1.jpg "PP&M[1]")
Never shouty, always melodic, the group fueled crowds by inspiring a peaceful form of activism by the throngs that assembled during many of their most memorable appearances on the National Mall and elsewhere. Many of Peter, Paul and Mary’s biggest hits were penned by the granddaddy of folk, Bob Dylan, such as “Blowin in the Wind,” and “The Times They Are a Changin.” Travers had a beautiful, harmonious voice, but she made an impact with her appearance as well — tall, blond and striking on stage when flanked by guitarists Paul Stookey and Peter Yarrow.
If one were to assign a poltiical label to Mary Travers, it most certainly would be ‘liberal.’ She sang out against nuclear energy, and war of nearly every kind and for peace in Central America in the 1980’s. But her folk trio was a tour-de-force when rallying millions toward the realization that the time had come for civil rights in the early 1960’s. They performed “If I Had A Hammer” at the 1963 March on Washington, just before Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech. There’s no doubt, that day will live on infinitely for America and Mary Travers was there.
Travers leaves a legacy of powerful folk music, but also a timely lesson: no matter what one’s political beliefs, we all owe it to ourselves to listen and make up our own minds. Did she always have a just cause? She certainly thought so, and thank God she lived in a country where her voice could be heard.
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51 Comments
I grew up with Peter, Paul, and Mary (well, with their music at least) and I always liked them. They were "liberal" in the good old fashioned '60s sense of the word, where at least half of their causes were actually just.
The times they are a changin'.
That's what 53% of the country voted for and now they are lookin to change it back.
I knew Mary and she could get a little carried away with the moonbat mood. But, she sure did not do the bruce springsteen vitriol and hate toward real America
I watched a special on them on PBS about 15-17 years ago and they sang that song "blowin' in the wind" at the time and it made me cry…She had a beautiful voice and all of them together was just harmony personified. I agree with Old Tom up there above me.
I understand where you're coming from, but I don't agree that 53% of the country voted for any sort of political agenda. They voted for a charismatic black man because it made them feel enlightened and sophisticated. And because McCain ran a crap campaign.
There's really nothing more to it than that.
I remember Peter Yarrow visiting our commune in Oakland back in 1966. He had an old communist friend who told me that I was completely innocent.
I am still not quite certain what that meant.
I say Mary at the New School in Manhattan back in the mid-80 at a film class. She struck me as cynically New York.
Puff the Magic Drago, an obvious reference to chasing the dragon (opium), had to have been heard multi-millions of times on records and the radio. I wonder if it karmically had anything to do with her heroin problems?
[...] Jason Killian Meath, Big Hollywood: Remembering Mary [...]
Oh, people always liked to say it was about pot or opium or whatever, but that's far from "obvious." In fact, it's one hell of a stretch. The song is OBVIOUSLY about lost childhood and growing up!
They were talented.
Sad to hear of Mary's passing. A sweet voice and a sweet girl. Just a little naive and if that is the worse that can be daid of somebody then that person did well. Loved the folk music scene back then. Oh Oh, just dated myself.
"…live in infamy?"
Sad to hear of Mary's passing. A sweet voice and a sweet girl. Just a little naive and if that is the worst that can be said of somebody then that person did well. Loved the folk music scene back then. Oh Oh, just dated myself.
Was going to suggest a edit myself, obviously a typo or misunderstanding of the word.
"If I Had A Dictionary…"
Infamy?? One of America's strongest and most memorable days. I certainly hope it was a typo.
I totally agree with you.
RIP Mary. Good job!
Yeah, I was getting ready to comment about that… as Senor Montoya once said, "I do not think it means what you think it means."
I was very, very young the first time I heard Puff the Magic Dragon. Literary or any other analysis aside, I still love the song as it is, literally. A child and a dragon. I got it, even as a kid, that Jackie Paper grew up, and those lyrics, along with my 33 lp of cowboy songs, planted that voice in my head to never forget, no matter how many years go by, that I am still that kid, as are my brothers. Don't have to stick my fingers in my ears and chant lalalala when others try to relate it to drugs, or politics, or whatever. I know. And I believe.
Sorry, but when I hear of Peter, Paul and Mary all that comes to mind is the classic mock – umentary, 'A Mighty Wind.' PP+M = middlebrow tripe.
PP&M were probably fortunate to have really come together in the early 60s, where (combined with the general laid-back nature of folk to begin with) you could be pretty far left but still market a far softer, less antagonizing type of liberalism than what developed even as early as 1967. It makes it easier to enjoy the music without immediately mentally attaching the songs to ideology, as is generally the case with today singer/songwriters, whose lyrics and statements have all the subtlety of a jackhammer).
For some reason, I have the following stuck in my head after hearing about PP&M:
Lemon tree very pretty
and the lemon flower is sweet
But the fruit of the poor lemon
is impossible to eat.
No matter how harmless and sweet the '60s radicals seemed, they set the stage for what we have today, and it is indeed impossible to eat. That being said, they sure did sound good.
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What the froosh? I eschewed politics and wrote a brief blurb about the one most memorable (though I remember others) song from PP & M that has no connotations in my memories other than a boy and his dragon friend, and my fookin comment is in limbo? Fook that lame crap.
Overtly, the song is about childhood.
Subtextually, it is difficult to believe that beatniks Peter, Paul and Mary had no idea that their song implied weed or smoking O – especially since Mary ended up with years after years of a serious jones. It's even harder to imagine that every time they sang the lyrics "Puff, the magic dragon," that they weren't smiling to themselves at their inside joke.
Of course, like Bob Dylan, none of them will ever cop to their part in the drugging of America.
And there will be legions who try to claim that none of it happened. It's like watching the old Antonioni movie Blow Up.
It is official, the local PBS station will finally stop offering Peter, Paul, and Mary concert tickets as pledge incentives. Although the DVD and CD offerings, and the repeating of the various specials, will likely continue for at least a decade.
Will PBS not die until the old hippies do?
Jeepers Batman! PP&M are about as harmless as you can get. Rather a yawn, in fact. Like Ellen Degeneris said, I went out and got a hammer. I found I didn't use it that much.
In the mid-Seventies, I was at a very down momement in my lie when "Weave Me the Sunshine" began to play on the radio, and things quickly seemed better. It's interesting how some of the words seem to forecast 9/11.
My music teacher in the 70s used to make us sing their songs almost every week. It was ok at first but it got really old half way though the school year. My music teacher was too old to be a hippy but i could see her as a beat neck.
Travers was a goofy liberal, of course, but her group was in my opinion, one of the last "popular" music groups that had any value since the coarsening and dumbing down of American music began in the mid-1960s. Peter, Paul and Mary sang songs that had actual melodies, you could hear and understand the words and the words actually meant something! Not like today when nearly all music is some idiot bouncing around a stage wailing out nonsense syllables discordantly to an overwhelming bass beat!
Sad to hear of Mary's passing, I never liked her support for Libtards.
I have met many Libtards and trust me they are perverts.
I agree. It's a conundrum. Perhaps it's hypocritical of me to be willing to listen to PP&M, but avoid Julia Roberts, Bruce Springsteen, Dixie Chicks, etc. like the plague. On the other hand, I don't want to pay a dime of my money to people who will just funnel it to the Democrats.
Good point about the words of Lemon Tree applying to all this. I'd never thought about it.
Ever heard Herb Alpert's version?
Dear God, I hate folk music.
This is what I can't get past. The pernicious fruits of the liberal movement they helped start. If only their songs had been less sweet and appealing, fewer people might have been influenced by them. Evil with a pretty exterior is, perhaps, worse than evil that shows itself openly.
There's no reason to think "Puff the Magic Dragon" was about marijuana, except the vague, general feeling that EVERY song of the Sixties had to be about drugs.
The song was based on a story written by a friend of Peter Yarrow's at Cornell, back in the Fifties- LONG before marijuana usage was widespread.
Yarrow himself has always emphatically denied that the song had any drug connotations, and has often asserted, "Believe me, if I'd wanted to write a song about marijuana, I'd have written a song about marijuana. But it's NOT! I'd tell you if it was."
As for me… I never had any political sympathies for PP&M, but I sang al ltheir songs on the bus to CYO camp, and I have a lot of happy memories of those days. I still love to hear their rendition of "A Soaling" at Christmas time, I still get teary eyed when I hear "Leaving on a Jet Plane," and my 5 year old son still loves to hear Mary sing about being eaten by a boa constrictor. So, I cut her a lot of slack ,and I'll even miss her a bit.
true that, instant absolution for liberal guilt doesn't seem so cool now, eh?
obamacare may just hasten that!
Didn't agree with one single thing PP&M preached, but I sure loved their music. Bought all their albums, and
today own several of their DVDs. You can indeed appreciate the messenger without having to buy the message. They sang Dylan better than Dylan could, and were truly the soundtrack of the 60s.
God speed, Mary Travers…
"What the world needs now, is another folk singer, like i need a hole in my head." – Cracker
PP&M are a problem for me. Their music was always of the highest quality, whatever one thinks about the content. They all had great voices and perfect harmony. Their songs are a pleasure to listen to. But for me, their 60s-era folkie sincerity and their overall image grew old a long time ago. They are true 60s people – locked in a time warp, evidently. (Peter and Paul are absolutely 60s liberal-intellectual-wet-dream guys. For some reason, I always thought of Mary as the leader of the group, with Peter & Paul as her fey little assistants.) I wasn't part of that era. I can't listen to "Puff the Magic Dragon" without my irony alarm going off. Sorry – no magic for me.
However, I do think it's sad that Mary couldn't spend her last years really doing what she loved and I'm sorry she went through so much pain in the end. Nobody deserves that. I'm glad that her voice will live on – and the good feelings she inspired in so many people of her generation.
Not a huge fan of 60s folk music in general. Not my thing. My image of 60s folk music is of a million Jewish NYU Poli-Sci majors in horn-rimmed glasses and striped shirts playing banjos and singing "Jimmy Crack Corn" while Burl Ives, naked except for a railroad engineer's cap, dances madly around a statue of Samuel Gompers. Folkies were very silly. The only useful thing they really did was bring REAL folk musicians (blues men and bluegrass specialists mostly) back into the public eye. They helped a lot of those old timers find work and preserved their music for later generations (e.g., mine) to enjoy.
Peter, Paul, and Mary was for me the musical equivalent of comfort food. I grew up listening to it, and even now, pulling out one of their CDs is the equivalent of Mom giving me a hug and telling me that everything is going to be alright. As I've gotten older, I have come to see some of the corniness in their songs ("If you want a hammer, what's stopping you? Go to the hardware store, you'll spend about a buck fifty, tops") as well as the absurdity of Ivy League grads trying to sing like illiterate field-hands. But the music is still pretty, and I have good memories associated with it.
Oh, and their Christmas album was beautiful. Still one of my favorites.
RIP Mary.
"My image of 60s folk music is of a million Jewish NYU Poli-Sci majors in horn-rimmed glasses and striped shirts playing banjos and singing "Jimmy Crack Corn" while Burl Ives, naked except for a railroad engineer's cap, dances madly around a statue of Samuel Gompers. "
Wow, that must have been one spicy plate of enchiladas you ate before going to bed last night. That's usually what gives me those kinds of dreams.
But yes, the blues and blugrass musicians hold a special place in my heart. To this day I carry a Hohner Blues Harp with me everywhere I go.
yyyyyyeeeeaaaaaahhhhhhh, get it out, GET IT OUT!!!!!!!
It won't go away…………*sob*
My parents might; I grew up listening to PP&M among others because that was what my folks listened to. I've developed an appreciation for some.
Some of my earliest, best memories are of playing with toys on the living room floor while singing along with Peter, Paul & Mary and Beatles records. R.I.P. Mary.
You all are crazy.Mary did not do drugs,the song was not about drugs, I would know,I toured with them all my life.Her daugter.
Like I said talking about people in the 60s is like watching the ending to the old Antonioni film Blow Up.
I come upon tennis players who are running all over the court hitting a ball that does not exist. They whack it over by me and wait. They all want me to pick it up and throw it back onto the court for them to continue their pantomime.
Mary Travers, R.I.P.
I am 36 and a PP&M fan. It's my parents' fault! (I also like Neil Diamond.) Dad used to sing in the car when we were on trips and they had singable songs. (along with "Last Kiss" and "Where Have All the Flowers Gone" and others… I miss my Dad). Anyway…
I LOVE LOVE LOVE "Puff" and have since I was 5 years old and wore out my red PP&M 8-track. I saw them on PBS, goodness – it had to have been 15 years or more ago, and the best part was when they made Puff living "present tense" in Honilee. I don't want to hear about the drug stuff, because it DOESN'T matter to me.
I was older before I saw the political in their songs, but I already had a soft spot for them, and there's some application to the modern conservative struggles.
I also learned harmony from PP&M. So, RIP, Mary.
You should check this out…
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