Peter Yarrow, the singer-songwriter highest referred to as one-third of Peter, Paul and Mary, the folk-music trio whose impassioned harmonies transfixed tens of millions as they lifted their voices in partial of civil rights and in opposition to battle, has died, publicist Ken Sunshine showed to CBS Information. Yarrow used to be 86.
Yarrow, who additionally co-wrote the gang’s maximum enduring tune, “Puff the Magic Dragon,” died Tuesday in Untouched York, Sunshine instructed the Related Press. Yarrow have been combating bladder most cancers for the while 4 years.
“Our fearless dragon is tired and has entered the last chapter of his magnificent life. The world knows Peter Yarrow the iconic folk activist, but the human being behind the legend is every bit as generous, creative, passionate, playful, and wise as his lyrics suggest,” his daughter Bethany stated in a remark.
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All through an out of this world run of luck spanning the Sixties, Yarrow, Noel Paul Stookey and Mary Travers absolved six Billboard Manage 10 singles, two Disagree. 1 albums and received 5 Grammys.
Additionally they introduced early publicity to Bob Dylan via turning two of his songs, “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right” and “Blowin’ in the Wind,” into Billboard Manage 10 hits as they helped manage an American renaissance in folks track. They carried out “Blowin’ in the Wind” on the 1963 March on Washington at which the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his well-known “I Have a Dream” speech.
Then an eight-year hiatus to pursue solo careers, the trio reunited in 1978 for a “Survival Sunday,” an anti-nuclear-power live performance that Yarrow had arranged in Los Angeles. They’d stay in combination till Travers’ loss of life in 2009. Upon her passing, Yarrow and Stookey endured to accomplish each one after the other and in combination.
Born Would possibly 31, 1938, in Untouched York, Yarrow used to be raised in an higher center elegance crowd he stated positioned prime worth on artwork and scholarship. He took violin courses as a kid, nearest switching to guitar as he got here to include the paintings of such folk-music icons as Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger.
Upon graduating from Cornell College in 1959, he returned to Untouched York, the place he labored as a suffering Greenwich Village musician till connecting with Stookey and Travers. Even supposing his stage used to be in psychology, he had discovered his true calling in folks track at Cornell when he labored as a instructing worker for a category in American folklore his senior 12 months.
“I did it for the money because I wanted to wash dishes less and play guitar more,” he instructed the past due report corporate government Joe Smith. However as he led the category in tune, he started to find the emotional have an effect on track can have on an target audience.
“I saw these young people at Cornell who were basically very conservative in their backgrounds opening their hearts up and singing with an emotionality and a concern through this vehicle called folk music,” he stated. “It gave me a clue that the world was on its way to a certain kind of movement, and that folk music might play a part in it and that I might play a part in folk music.”
Quickly upcoming going back on Untouched York, he met impresario Albert Grossman, who would walk directly to lead Dylan, Janis Joplin and others and who on the pace used to be taking a look to manufacture a gaggle that will rival the Kingston Trio, which in 1958 had a clash model of the normal folks ballad “Tom Dooley.”
However Grossman sought after a trio with a feminine singer and a member who may well be humorous enough quantity to hold an target audience in demand with comedian patter. For the extreme, Yarrow urged a guitar-strumming Greenwich Village comedian he’d revealed named Noel Stookey.
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Stookey, who would significance his center title as a member of the gang, came about to be a pal of Travers, who as a teen had carried out and recorded with Seeger and others. Gripped via degree fright, she used to be unenthusiastic to tied the pair in the beginning, converting her thoughts upcoming she heard how neatly her contralto expression melded with Yarrow’s tenor and Stookey’s baritone.
“We called Noel up. He was there,” Yarrow stated, recalling the primary pace the 3 carried out in combination. “We mentioned a bunch of folk songs, which he didn’t know because he didn’t have a real folk-music background, and wound up singing ‘Mary Had a Little Lamb.’ And it was immediately great, was just as clear as a bell, and we started working.”
Then months of practice session the 3 was an in a single day sensation when their first copy, 1962’s eponymous “Peter, Paul and Mary,” reached Disagree. 1 at the Billboard chart. Their 2d, “In the Wind,” reached Disagree. 4 and their 0.33, “Moving,” put them again at Disagree. 1.
From their earliest albums, the trio sang out in opposition to battle and injustice in songs like Seeger’s “If I Had a Hammer” and “Where Have all the Flowers Gone,” Dylan’s “Blowin’ in the Wind” and “When the Ship Comes In” and Yarrow’s personal “Day is Done.”
They might additionally display a comfortable and poignant aspect, in particular on “Puff the Magic Dragon,” which Yarrow had written all through his Cornell years with faculty pal Leonard Lipton.
It tells the story of Jackie Paper, a tender boy who embarks on numerous adventures along with his make-believe dragon pal till he outgrows such formative years fantasies and leaves a sobbing, despondent Puff in the back of. As Yarrow explains: “A dragon lives forever, but not so little boys.”
Some insisted they heard drug references within the tune, a rivalry on the middle of a well-known scene within the movie “Meet the Parents,” when Ben Stiller angers his female friend’s tightly wound father (Robert De Niro) via pronouncing “puff” refers to marijuana smoke. Yarrow maintained it mirrored the lack of formative years innocence and not anything extra.
Then recording their ultimate Disagree. 1 clash, a 1969 shield of John Denver’s “Leaving on a Jet Plane,” the trio fracture up please see 12 months to pursue solo careers.
That very same 12 months Yarrow pleaded responsible to taking indecent liberties with a 14-year-old lady who had come to his resort room together with her used sister to invite for autographs. The pair discovered him bare when he responded the door and allow them to in. Yarrow, who resumed his profession upcoming serving 3 months in prison, used to be pardoned via President Jimmy Carter in 1981. Over the a long time, he apologized many times.
“I fully support the current movements demanding equal rights for all and refusing to allow continued abuse and injury — most particularly of a sexual nature, of which I am, with great sorrow, guilty,” he told The New York Times in 2019 upcoming being disinvited from a competition over the sentence.
Through the years, Yarrow endured to put in writing and co-write songs, together with the 1976 clash “Torn Between Two Lovers” for Mary MacGregor. He won an Emmy nomination in 1979 for the animated movie “Puff the Magic Dragon.”
Upcoming songs come with the civil rights anthem “No Easy Walk to Freedom,” co-written with Margery Tabankin, and “Light One Candle,” calling for diversion in Lebanon.
Yarrow, who with Travers and Stookey had supported Democratic Sen. Eugene McCarthy’s 1968 presidential bid, met the Minnesota senator’s niece, Mary Beth McCarthy, at a marketing campaign match. The couple married please see 12 months. That they had two kids ahead of divorcing.
Along with his ex-wife and daughter, he’s survived via a son, Christopher, and a granddaughter, Valentina.
