Peter, Paul and Mary

The trio performing at the 1963 Civil Rights March on Washington, D.C.

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, and Carolyn Hester. 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 City's Greenwich Village.

The group recorded their debut album, Peter, Paul and Mary, and it was released by Warner Bros. 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 No. 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 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 rumors that the song refers to drugs, it is actually about the lost innocence of childhood.[4] That same year, they appeared as the "mystery guest" on the CBS TV game show What's My Line?. Dorothy Kilgallen correctly guessed their identity.[5]

That year the group performed "If I Had a Hammer" and "Blowin' in the Wind" at the August 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, best remembered for Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech. The Bob Dylan song "Blowin' in the Wind" was one of their biggest hit singles.[6] They also sang other Dylan songs, such as "The Times They Are a-Changin'"; "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right,"[6] and "When the Ship Comes In." Their success with Dylan's "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right" helped Dylan's The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan album rise into the top 30; it had been released four months earlier.[7]

In December 1969 "Leaving on a Jet Plane", written by the group's friend John Denver, became their only No. 1 single (as well as their final top 40 pop hit) and the group's sixth million-selling gold single. The track first appeared on their million-selling platinum certified Album 1700 in 1967 (which also contained their No. 9 hit "I Dig Rock and Roll Music"). Following Minnesota Sen. Eugene McCarthy's strong showing in the 1968 New Hampshire Primary, the group recorded "Eugene McCarthy For President (If You Love Your Country)" endorsing McCarthy, which was released without a record label.[8] "Day Is Done", a No. 21 hit in June 1969 from the trio's Grammy Award-winning Peter, Paul and Mommy album, was the last Hot 100 hit that the trio recorded.

The trio broke up in 1970 to pursue solo careers. Also during that year Peter Yarrow was convicted of making sexual advances toward a 14-year-old girl. Years later, Yarrow received a presidential pardon from Jimmy Carter.[9][10][11]

During 1971 and 1972 Warner released a debut solo album, with the same style cover, by each member of the group. Travers did concerts and lectures across the United States. She also produced, wrote, and starred in a BBC-TV series. Stookey formed a Christian music group called the Body Works Band and wrote "The Wedding Song (There Is Love)" for Yarrow's marriage to Marybeth McCarthy, the niece of Eugene McCarthy, according to Stookey during an interview on the DVD Carry It On, released in 2004 by Rhino Records. Britain's Petula Clark also recorded a version of the song, which in 1973 charted strongly in the UK, Australia and others. Yarrow co-wrote and produced Mary MacGregor's Torn Between Two Lovers (No. 1, 1977) and earned an Emmy for three animated TV specials based on "Puff the Magic Dragon."[12]

While the group was de facto broken up and touring separately, the trio still managed to come together for a series of reunions before officially coming back together again. In 1972, the trio reunited for Together for McGovern, a concert at Madison Square Garden to support George McGovern's presidential campaign, and again in 1978, for a concert to protest against nuclear energy. This concert was followed by a 1978 summer reunion tour. Included was a September 3 evening performance at Red Rocks Amphitheatre outside of Denver, Colorado.

A reunion album (titled Reunion) was released by Warner in 1978. Reviewing in Christgau's Record Guide: Rock Albums of the Seventies (1981), Robert Christgau said the decision to cover Bob Dylan's "Forever Young" as a "rinky-dink reggae like these three geezers means you've been middle-aged and liberal since you were fifteen."[13]

Peter, Paul and Mary in 2006

The summer tour in 1978 proved so popular that the group decided to reunite more or less permanently in 1981. They continued to record albums together and tour, playing around 45 shows a year, until the 2009 death of Mary Travers.[14] The trio would be accompanied in concert by double-bassist Dick Kniss (who had been their bassist on their studio recordings and their 1960s tours) and, starting in 1990, by multi-instrumentalist Paul Prestopino.

The trio were awarded the Peace Abbey Courage of Conscience on September 1, 1990.[15]

In 2004, Travers was diagnosed with leukemia, leading to the cancellation of the remaining tour dates for that year. She received a bone marrow transplant. She and the rest of the trio resumed their concert tour on December 9, 2005 with a holiday performance at Carnegie Hall.

The trio cancelled several dates of their summer 2007 tour, as Travers had to undergo a second surgery.[14] Travers was unable to perform on the trio's tour in mid-2009 because of the effects of leukemia, but Peter and Paul performed the scheduled dates as a duo, calling the show "Peter & Paul Celebrate Mary and 5 Decades of Friendship."

On September 16, 2009, Mary Travers died at the age of 72, of complications from chemotherapy, following treatment for leukemia.[16] It was the same year Peter, Paul and Mary were inducted into the Hit Parade Hall of Fame.

• A ^ Charted as a double A-side in Australia

• 1970: The Best of Peter, Paul and Mary: Ten Years Together (US: 2xPlatinum[20])
• 1998: Around the Campfire
• 1998: The Collection
• 1999: Songs of Conscience and Concern
• 2004: Carry It On [4-CD, 1-DVD boxed set]
• 2005: The Very Best of Peter, Paul & Mary
• 2005: Platinum Collection
• 2006: Weave Me the Sunshine

• 1964: In Concert
• 1983: Such Is Love
• 1988: A Holiday Celebration
• 1993: Peter, Paul & Mommy, Too
• 1996: LifeLines Live
• 2010: The Prague Sessions
• 2012: Peter Paul and Mary Live in Japan, 1967 (two-disc expansion of an album previously released only in Japan)
• 2014: Discovered: Live In Concert (collection of live songs from the 1980s onward that were never recorded in a studio)

• List of number-one hits (United States)
• List of artists who reached number one on the Hot 100 (U.S.)