A fair number of this blog's readers are too young to have first-hand memory of the sixties folk group known as Peter, Paul, and Mary. Mary Travers the sex-appeal member of a trio that included Paul Stookey and Peter Yarrow, died this week at age 72. She had contended with leukemia in recent years and finally succumbed.
Mary Travers wasn't just a pretty face in the trio. She had a powerful, urgent way of singing songs that were anthems of an era of civil rights protest and a call to justice. They sang pieces written by Canadian Gordon Lightfoot and had a big hit with the light-weight Puff the Magic Dragon, but it was songs such as If I Had a Hammer and Bob Dylan's Blowin' in the Wind that made them icons of the call for equality and freedom for all. In the latter years of the sixties I was in my mid teens and I leaned toward rock music, but it was impossible to ignore Peter, Paul and Mary.
I have no idea what Mary Travers religious convictions were. Paul Stookey eventually became open about his Christian faith and became a popular Christian singer. Whatever her faith stance was, she passionately lived out the justice message which is very much at the heart of the Judeo-Christian tradition.
Are you willing to admit that you remember Peter, Paul, and Mary? What are your recollections?
If I had a hammer I'd hammer in the morning
I'd hammer in the evening All over this land
I'd hammer out danger I'd hammer out a warning
I'd hammer out love between my brothers and my sisters
All over this land.
My formative teen years was in early 70's but I belonged to a musical Presbyery wide Young Adults Group whose members were 5 to 8 years older than myself and who sang a lot of Peter, Paul, and Mary's songs. I often felt their songs were anthems or clarion calls for love and peace.
ReplyDeleteThe songs were powerful and I still can recall and hum the songs today.
As I started to read your blog this a.m. aloud to my spouse, he started singing "If I had a hammer..." and sang exactly what you finished your blog off with. I do remember the songs and vaguely recall singing one or two at United Church camp. It is the mellow/calming feeling one gets when they listen or sing them that I recall most.
ReplyDeleteI always felt I was born into the wrong generation of music...the eighties didn't seem to leave a whole lot of meaningful music, to my liking anyways, or maybe I just didn't tune into the right stuff....Leaving on a Jet Plane was the first PP&M that came to mind, (and yes, I liked John Denver's version too, although now it seems a bit sappy and not nearly as profound as those you mentioned). Youth Groups and Remembrance Day assemblies introduced this social justice music to future generations, it seemed ...we still listen to Puff the Magic Dragon, which our youngest asks to repeat again and again.
ReplyDeleteSusan, I think there was many a United Church campfire around which those songs were sung in great earnestness. Perhaps it was because of a conviction that the world could change,something which had given way to "greed is good" by Laura's 80's.
ReplyDeleteI like the image of Joe serenading Nancy on a Saturday morning. And of Laura's three young daughters singing a hit that was middle-aged when they discovered it.
I was a guitar playing, barefoot, folk singer in the 60's with aspirations of being the next "Mary" (of the Peter and Paul kind of course). If it wasn't Mary it was Sylvia of Ian and Sylvia. Although I have difficulty remembering names, or where I placed the glasses (that are on top of my head) when any of those songs come on I can sing them with every word in place, every rest in place and with as much enthusiasm now as then. She truly will live on and on for me.
ReplyDeleteLong may you croon Lynn.
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