Mary Travers of Peter, Paul and Mary, has died
Mary Travers, of the hugely popular 1960s folk group Peter, Paul and Mary, has died after a years-long battle with leukemia. She was 72. Formed in 1961, Travers joined Peter Yarrow and Noel “Paul” Stookey to make music that mixed acoustic guitars with politics. Singing protest songs, Travers was the ideal public face for New York’s beatnik scene. The band recorded several Top 10 albums, and scored a No. 1 hit with “Leaving on a Jet Plane.”  Their version of the Pete Seeger song “If I Had a Hammer” became a civil-rights anthem, and they performed the song at the 1963 March on Washington. The trio continued to perform in spite of Travers dealing with the aftermath of chemotherapy and stem cell transplants to battle leukaemia, performing their final show in New Jersey on 20 May 2009. Puff The Magic Dragon was my favorite as a child unknowing of the hidden meaning, which makes it even better now! R.I.P. Mary Travers.
I have a bit of an ear for music, and it’s interesting that just out of the blue, spontaneously, after I had learned to strum chords on a guitar, I played and sung, “If I Had a Hammer,” a fun song to sing on a guitar. I guess my favorite of theirs.