The Music of PETER, PAUL AND MARY

The trio Peter, Paul and Mary (often PP&M) is a musical group from the United States; they were one of the most successful folk-singing groups of the 1960s. The trio comprises Peter Yarrow, Noel "Paul" Stookey and Mary Travers.

History
The group was created and managed by Albert Grossman, who sought to create a folk "supergroup" by bringing together "a tall blonde (Travers), a funny guy (Stookey) and a good looking guy (Yarrow)". He launched the group in 1961, booking them into the The Bitter End, a coffee house and popular folk venue in New York City's Greenwich Village.

They recorded their first album, Peter, Paul and Mary, the following year. It included "500 Miles", "Lemon Tree" and the Pete Seeger hit tunes "If I Had a Hammer" (sometimes subtitled "(The Hammer Song)") and "Where Have All the Flowers Gone?". The album was listed on the Billboard Magazine Top Ten list for ten months and in the Top One Hundred for over three years.

By 1963 they had recorded three albums. All three were in the Top 10 the week of President Kennedy's assassination. That year the group also released "Puff the Magic Dragon", which Yarrow and fellow Cornell student Leonard Lipton had written in 1959, and performed "If I Had a Hammer" at the 1963 March on Washington, best remembered for Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech. Their biggest hit single was the Bob Dylan song "Blowin' in the Wind," an international #1 and the fastest selling single ever cut by Warner Bros. Records. They also sang other Bob Dylan songs, such as "The Times They Are a-Changin'" or "When the Ship Comes In". For many years after, the group was at the forefront of the civil rights movement and other causes promoting social justice. "Leaving On A Jet Plane," which in December 1969 became their only #1 (as well as their final Top 40) hit, was written by John Denver (who already had had some success with The Chad Mitchell Trio) and first appeared on their Album 1700 in 1967. "Day Is Done," a #21 hit in June 1969, was the last Hot 100 hit the trio recorded.

On March 26, 1970, Peter Yarrow pled guilty to taking indecent liberties with a 14-year old girl in an August 31, 1969, incident at the Shoreham Hotel before a Washington, D.C., concert. Beginning September 1970 he served 3 months in prison. He was pardoned by President Jimmy Carter in 1981. Yarrow has called the incident the saddest and most reprehensible act he has ever done.

The trio broke up in 1970 to pursue solo careers, but found little of the success they had experienced as a group, although Stookey's "The Wedding Song (There is Love)" (written for Yarrow's marriage to Marybeth McCarthy, the niece of senator Eugene McCarthy) was a hit and has become a wedding standard since its 1971 release.

In 1978, they reunited for a concert to protest nuclear energy, and have recorded albums together and toured since. They currently play around 45 shows a year.

The group was inducted into the Vocal Group Hall of Fame in 1999.

Listen to their songs.