Tag Archives: Mary Travers

American Values: Who Could Sing It Better Than Mary Travers

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Public Television broadcast a classic concert by “Peter, Paul, and Mommy” (aka Peter, Paul, and Mary) over the weekend.

PP&M topped off the concert with their three all-time-favorite American folk songs:

  • “If I Had A Hammer”
  • “Blowing In The Wind”
  • “This Land Is Your Land”

As the last notes echoed, Mary Travers delivered the trio’s classic statement of American values:

“The answer is still Peace, Justice, and Equality, and all of us working for those things together.”

That was the signature close at the grand finale of PP&M concerts.

It would also be a good rallying cry for the Baby Boomer generation, to keep us focused and centered on core American values during the crazy 2010 election year, and all the unsettled years ahead.

— John Hayden

Mary Travers, 72 — Her Folk Songs Forever Blowin’ In The Wind

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Peter, Paul and Mary's first record album, 1961, Warner Bros. High Fidelity Monophonic. Album cover photograph at The Bitter End, NYC.

Peter, Paul and Mary's first record album, 1961, Warner Bros. High Fidelity Monophonic. Album cover photograph at The Bitter End, NYC.

Folk singer Mary Travers passed away Wednesday. She was 72 and had suffered from leukemia.

Mary Travers, Peter Yarrow, and Noel “Paul” Stookey — Peter, Paul and Mary — came together in 1961 in Greenwich Village, and were advocates for peace, justice and equality for nearly half a century.

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Mary once said, “We may have marched with Martin Luther King and sung “Blowin’ In The Wind” on the 1963 march on Washington — but we also sang it with Archbishop Tutu and in a political prison in El Salvador. We sang it over the grave of Andrew Goodman, one of the civil rights workers murdered in Mississippi in 1964 — and we sang it when an 8-year-old boy was killed by the Contras in Nicaragua.”

Noel "Paul" Stookey (left), Mary Travers, and Peter Yarrow.

Noel "Paul" Stookey (left), Mary Travers, and Peter Yarrow.

For more about Mary Travers’ life, and statements by Peter Yarrow and Noel “Paul” Stookey, click on www.peterpaulandmary.com.

Noel and Peter will carry on the work and the music, I believe.

Those of us who can remember the peace movement and the civil rights movement of the 1960s will have to put away the notion that we’re forever young, but Puff (The Mighty Dragon) will continue to roar.