Blowin' In the Wind

Mary Travers, the heart of Peter, Paul and Mary, died the other day of leukemia. To call her the woman who sang with Peter Yarrow and Paul Stookey is an understatement. It's because she was a woman, and had a perspective neither Yarrow nor Stookey could completely (or perhaps even partially) share, that gave Peter, Paul and Mary their own depth and humanity. Artificially assembled by folk music mogul Albert Grossman (Bob Dylan's original manager), the trio was made authentic by that same humanity.

Some of Peter, Paul and Mary's critics suggested that they were a bland aspect of the folk music scene whose biggest if not only contribution to the genre was popularizing it for a wider audience. This assessment misses the point. Because they were more mainstream, they were able to bring the best elements of folk - its social consciousness and its musical economy - to a wider audience and make it acceptable. They did so at a time when Americans were coming out of the complacency of the Eisenhower years and when rock and roll was in a period of irrelevance (much like today). Mary Travers made that possible with her own Middle American sensibilities (she grew up in Kentucky) and her nurturing personality. She later became a mother and a grandmother, two roles she obviously considered more important than her role as a folk icon.

It was a lonely road for the trio in the era of Reaganesque conservatism, but the values Peter, Paul and Mary espoused have slowly been creeping back and Mary Travers certainly lived long enough to see it. She most likely knew that more is needed to be done. There is, as Peter Paul and Mary once sang, no easy walk for freedom.

Least of all for Mary Travers. RIP. :-(