Peter, Paul and more than memories http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/musicnightlife/2016011193_peter26.html
Though Mary Travers died in 2009, Peter Yarrow and (Noel) Paul Stookey have continued to perform as the remaining two-thirds of the classic '60s folk trio Peter, Paul and Mary. Yarrow and Stookey perform Monday, Aug. 29, at the Evergreen State Fair in Monroe. By Tom Keogh August 25, 2011 Peter Yarrow recalls looking out from a stage at the Lincoln Memorial, guitar in hand, at a quarter-million people gathered for the March on Washington. The crowd, soon to hear Martin Luther King Jr. deliver his immortal "I Have a Dream" speech at the Aug. 28, 1963, National Mall rally for civil and economic rights, was also stirred by what Yarrow calls "music of conscience" performed by Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Mahalia Jackson, and his own hugely popular folk trio Peter, Paul and Mary. Yarrow remembers Mary Travers, his partner along with Noel Paul Stookey in the acoustic group, taking his hand in acknowledgment of the history they were witnessing. Peter, Paul and Mary then added to the day's lore by playing Dylan's "Blowin' In the Wind" and Pete Seeger's "If I Had a Hammer." "The air was thick with love, hope and anticipation," Yarrow says by phone from New York City. Exactly 48 years and a day later, on Monday, Yarrow and Stookey will perform both of those classics, and many more, at the Evergreen State Fair in Monroe. The two singers and hit songwriters — Yarrow wrote "Puff, the Magic Dragon," Stookey, "The Wedding Song (There Is Love)" — have continued as a duo since the 2009 death of Travers. "People love the music, and the music should, for them, carry on," says Yarrow. "We're not saying we're Peter, Paul and Mary. There will never be another Mary. But I'm proud of the legacy." That legacy began in 1961. Yarrow was one of many aspiring folk artists playing coffeehouses and clubs in New York. Up-and-coming manager Albert Grossman, who would eventually sign Dylan and Janis Joplin, persuaded him to form a group. "I started looking at other performers in Greenwich Village and found Mary," Yarrow says, noting that Travers was not particularly focused on a career. Similarly, Stookey, a comedian who also played music, was reluctant to change gears. "But I knew he'd come around," says Yarrow. The enormous success of their first recording, 1962's "Peter, Paul and Mary," with half its material written by Stookey and Yarrow and the rest covers such as Seeger's and Joe Hickerson's "Where Have All the Flowers Gone," was followed by nine albums before the group broke up in 1970. Touring and memorable appearances on television and at the Newport Folk Festival placed Peter, Paul and Mary at the forefront of the early 1960s folk-music phenomenon. "On stage, Mary's charisma was so profound, it was the dominant performing force," says Yarrow. "But the quieter perspective brought by Noel and I was a counterpoint. Noel invited people to feel the poetry of a song, whereas I invited the audience to sing. The group's spirit was carried by all of us." Peter, Paul and Mary were always closely linked to progressive politics. They performed together in the 1970s to support George McGovern's presidential campaign and protest nuclear energy before reuniting permanently in 1981. Yarrow's extensive activism has included coordinating major anti-war events, aiding Soviet Jewry and, recently, decrying the felony conviction of environmental protester Tim De Christopher, who disrupted a Utah oil-and-gas-lease auction in 2008. These days, Yarrow is most focused on his 13-year-old Operation Respect, a free curriculum of conflict resolution and tolerance currently taught in 22,000 schools in America, Israel, Ukraine, Croatia and elsewhere. In 2003, the U.S. Congress recognized Yarrow and Operation Respect with a special resolution. "It's the most important thing I'm doing," he says. "The beginnings of hate and war start with exclusion and bullying. If you want to change that trajectory, educate kids to accept and value one another." Tom Keogh: tomwke...@yahoo.com . . -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Sixties-L" group. To post to this group, send email to sixties-l@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to sixties-l+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sixties-l?hl=en.
