’60s music legends Peter, Paul and Mary still making an impact

By Quentin Young

Peter, Paul and Mary were a popular musical trio of twenty-somethings when they stepped in front of a quarter of a million people at the March on Washington on Aug. 28, 1963.

They were at the forefront of a growing folk music scene, which had an inherent message of social justice. But during that performance — on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in the company of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and before the eyes of the nation — the group’s direction took a profound turn.

“When we sang ‘Blowin’ in the Wind’ and ‘If I Had a Hammer’ that day, it changed the way we saw the world … and our role in it,” Peter, Paul and Mary write in a new image-filled book about the history of the group. They saw how the message of their music could make a difference, and it’s a message that resonates to this day.

Peter Yarrow — the Peter of the group’s name — will visit Boulder to perform and sign copies of the coffee-table book, “Peter, Paul and Mary: Fifty Years in Music and Life.” The event, sponsored by the Boulder Bookstore, is set for 7:30 p.m. Monday, Dec. 15, at First Congregational Church, 1128 Pine St.

Yarrow, Noel “Paul” Stookey and Mary Travers came together in the early 1960s in New York’s Greenwich Village under the guidance of pioneering manager Albert Grossman, who also guided Bob Dylan and other iconic artists of the time. Dylan’s potent songs, including “Blowin’ in the Wind” and “The Times They Are a-Changin’,” became staples of their early repertoire.

“Blowin’ in the Wind” famously asks “how many years” must pass for social change to come, and in some ways, Yarrow has seen the question answered.

“It was impossible to even consider that a person of color would be president” when the group started, Yarrow, who still lives in New York, said during a phone interview last week.

But, in other ways, the answer seems more elusive than ever. Recent cases of unarmed black men being killed by cops, abuses of human rights at Guantanamo and other lapses of social justice indicate to Yarrow that there is much “unfinished work.”

Part of the problem is that the social climate is much different in 2014 than it was in the 1960s, Yarrow said.

“The heart of America has been infected,” he said. “We have a black hole of empathy in America. It is not comprehensive, but this is a very, very difficult time in the world and in our country.”

Yarrow offers an antidote, not so much in the form of arguing against such negativity but in offering a positive alternative of togetherness and understanding, he said.

A measure of Peter, Paul and Mary’s influence comes in the foreword of “Fifty Years,” which was written by John Kerry, the U.S. secretary of state.

“Through both their songs and their struggle, they helped propel our nation on its greatest journey, on the march toward greater equality,” Kerry wrote. “With their passion and persistence, Peter, Paul and Mary helped widen the circle of our democracy.”

Travers died in 2009, and Yarrow said her death got Stookey and him thinking about the time the three of them had together and what they had achieved.

“We realized we wanted to share the story of what we had experienced,” Yarrow said.

More important for him, however, is the hope that the book might serve as inspiration for even just one young person who’s feeling disillusioned or disaffected.

“That would give me great satisfaction,” Yarrow said.