{"id":13014,"date":"2025-01-09T13:39:07","date_gmt":"2025-01-09T18:39:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/acousticmusicscene.com\/?p=13014"},"modified":"2025-08-11T15:54:01","modified_gmt":"2025-08-11T19:54:01","slug":"peter-yarrow-of-peter-paul-and-mary-1938-2025","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/acousticmusicscene.com\/2025\/01\/09\/peter-yarrow-of-peter-paul-and-mary-1938-2025\/","title":{"rendered":"Peter Yarrow of Peter, Paul and Mary, 1938 -2025"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Peter
Peter Yarrow, a celebrated singer-songwriter and social activist, has died at 86.<\/figcaption><\/figure>Peter Yarrow — the singer-songwriter and social activist best known as part of the seminal folk harmony trio Peter Paul & Mary — died at his home in New York City on January 7, 2025 following a four year-bout with bladder cancer. He was 86.<\/p>\n

Peter, Paul and Mary\u2019s music and social activism helped to shape a generation. Through the years, the popular and inspirational folk trio who frequently sang out against war and injustice touched the hearts and consciences of millions of people worldwide, won five Grammy Awards, received eight gold and five platinum records, released six Billboard top 10 singles, had two #1 Billboard chart-topping albums and a dozen top 40 hits, and have been the subject of five PBS documentaries.<\/p>\n

Peter Yarrow was born on May 31, 1938 in New York City. Although he took violin lessons as a child, inspired by folks like Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger, he later switched to guitar. After graduating from Cornell University in 1959 with a degree in Psychology (although he also was a teaching assistant in an American folklore class), Yarrow returned to NYC and began playing the folk clubs and basket houses of Greenwich Village. After meeting music impresario Albert Grossman (who managed Dylan, Janis Joplin, Odetta, and others) who was eager to work with a folk harmony group, Yarrow set about with Grossman to launch one. <\/p>\n

Peter, Paul and Mary \u2013 featuring Yarrow (guitar and tenor vocals), Noel Paul Stookey\u2019s (guitar and gentle baritone vocals) and Mary Travers\u2019 (contralto vocals) — formed in 1961, having made its first public appearance that fall at the Bitter End on Bleecker Street in New York City\u2019s Greenwich Village. The trio\u2019s eponymous debut album, released on Warner Brothers Records in May 1962, topped the charts that summer, remained in the Billboard magazine top 10 for ten months and the top 20 for two years, sold more than two-million copies, and featured the Grammy Award-winning hit single, \u201cIf I Had a Hammer.\u201d That song, penned by Pete Seeger and Lee Hays of The Weavers (whom Yarrow viewed as early mentors), became an anthem of the civil rights movement and was performed by the trio on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, along with its rendition of Bob Dylan\u2019s \u201cBlowin\u2019 in the Wind,\u201d during the historic 1963 March on Washington at which the late Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his \u201cI Have a Dream\u201d speech. <\/p>\n

\"Folk
Folk trio Peter, Paul and Mary captured live in concert (Photo: Robert Corwin)<\/figcaption><\/figure>The trio\u2019s sophomore release, Movin’<\/em>, featured \u201cPuff the Magic Dragon,\u201d a now classic song co-written by Yarrow and his college friend Lenny Lipton while at Cornell that has been a children\u2019s favorite for decades and also was the inspiration behind a 1978 animated TV special and was made into an illustrated children\u2019s book by Yarrow. Although some believe that the song contains drug references, suggesting that \u201cpuff\u201d refers to marijuana smoke, Yarrow maintained that the song about a young boy and his make-believe dragon friend just reflected the loss of childhood innocence. \u201cA dragon lives forever, but not so little boys.\u201d<\/p>\n

Peter, Paul and Mary\u2019s rendition of \u201c Bob Dylan\u2019s \u201cBlowin\u2019 in the Wind\u201d was released in the summer of 1963 and also became a big hit for the trio. Archival footage of the trio performing the song during the march appears in the 2014 PBS documentary 50 Years with Peter, Paul and Mary, produced and directed by Emmy Award-winner Jim Brown. As Yarrow observes in the documentary, it was time when \u201cmusic began to inspire America, tweak its conscience, and articulate its dreams.\u201d <\/p>\n

Besides \u201cBlowin\u2019 in the Wind,\u201d the trio also recorded Dylan\u2019s \u201cWhen the Ship Comes In\u201d and Don\u2019t Think Twice, It\u2019s All Right,\u201d with its rendition of the latter song also landing in Billboard\u2019s top 10. Yarrow served on the board of the Newport Folk Festival and helped to emcee the event in 1965 when Dylan went electric. Famously, as recreated in the widely acclaimed Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown that is currently screening at movie theaters, Dylan borrowed Yarrow\u2019s guitar to play \u201cIt\u2019s All Over Now, Baby Blue.\u201d <\/p>\n

Although Peter, Paul and Mary performed together over the span of 50 years, there were times when the trio was on hiatus with each of its members pursuing solo careers and projects. The first such break came in 1970, shortly after the release of the trio\u2019s cover of John Denver\u2019s \u201cLeavin\u2019 on a Jet Plane\u201d and Yarrow\u2019s conviction after pleading guilty to taking \u201cindecent liberties\u201d with an under-age girl who had come to his dressing room seeking an autograph in 1969, for which he served three months in prison.<\/p>\n

While \u201cLeavin\u2019 on a Jet Plane\u201d was its last number one hit, Yarrow penned \u201cLight One Candle\u201d for the trio in 1982 \u2013 while war was raging in Lebanon \u2013 that has since become a popular Chanukah song. Peter, Paul and Mary performed \u201cLight One Candle\u201d — whose lyrics commemorate a war of national liberation fought by the Maccabees, while also calling for peace in the Middle East \u2013 for several years before recording it on its 1986 studio album No Easy Walk to Freedom. Its moving lyrics include: \u201cLight one candle for the terrible sacrifice justice and freedom demand. Light one candle for the wisdom to know when the peacemaker\u2019s time is at hand.\u201d The 1986 album\u2019s title track is a civil rights anthem that Yarrow co-wrote with Margery Tabankin. <\/p>\n

\"Peter
Peter Yarrow is all smiles in this publicity photo.<\/figcaption><\/figure>Both prior to and in the years since Mary Travers passing in 2009, Peter — both solo and with Noel \u201cPaul\u201d Stookey and others \u2013- continued to make music and to lend his voice and support to causes in which he passionately believed. <\/p>\n

An anti-war activist, Yarrow helped to organize and produce a number of large events including peace concerts at NYC\u2019s Madison Square Garden and Shea Stadium, as well as the 1969 \u201cCelebration of Life\u201d march and demonstration in Washington, DC during which some 500,000 people demanded an end to America\u2019s involvement in Vietnam.<\/p>\n

Yarrow was a major champion of other songwriters who particularly sought to nurture the talents of new and emerging ones who, as he put it, \u201cwrite from the heart.\u201d A founding board member of the Newport Folk Festival, he also developed and hosted a Sunday afternoon concert focused on emerging folk artists and songwriters \u2013 providing earl opportunities to such artists as Eric Anderson, Tim Hardin and Buffy St. Marie. Ten years later, in 1972, he partnered with Rod Kennedy, the late founder-producer of the Kerrville Folk Festival to establish what\u2019s now the Grassy Hill Kerrville New Folk Competition for Emerging Songwriters. The Kerrville New Folk Concerts have become a highlight of the annual festival that is geared towards singer-songwriters of various musical styles and is the longest continuously running festival of its kind in North America.<\/p>\n

Yarrow believed that music could be a transformative tool for informing the ethical sensibilities of children. In 1999, he established Operation Respect — an educational nonprofit organization and program that seeks to teach children about tolerance and respect for each other\u2019s differences \u2013 using music, video, and conflict resolution curricula developed by Educators for Social Responsibility. In an interview with AcousticMusicScene.com<\/em> in 2010, Yarrow maintained that \u201call kids deserve to grow up accepting each other,\u201d expressing concern that 160,000 American children refuse to go to school because of cruelty, according to the American Association of School psychologists. Citing \u201cour need to inherit a peaceful world,\u201d he noted that peace education was regarded as \u201cseditious\u201d when the Operation Respect program was launched. It has since been incorporated into the curriculum of some 22,000 U.S. elementary and middle schools.<\/p>\n

A former board member of the Connecticut Hospice, where he also periodically sang for patients and staff, he was long active on behalf of the hospice movement. <\/p>\n

Last April, Yarrow joined Stookey in in performing in Boston during a Folk Americana Roots Hall of Fame induction ceremony. Peter, Paul and Mary were among the inaugural class of inductees.<\/p>\n

As Yarrow told AcousticMusicScene.com<\/em> in 2010: \u201c\u201dMusic can be used as a powerful force in a world where we desperately need it \u2026 Music is something that binds the hearts and can bring us together.\u201d Here’s a link to read that article: https:\/\/acousticmusicscene.com\/2010\/11\/27\/the-peter-yarrow-sing-along-special-airs-on-pbs-stations\/<\/a><\/p>\n

Many of Peter Yarrow\u2019s songs and those by other songwriters that Peter, Paul and Mary covered over the decades have a timeless quality to them and multigenerational appeal. For Peter Yarrow, \u201cDay is Done,\u201d yet his music and that of Peter, Paul and Mary lives on. So too do his widow Mary Beth (the niece of the late Sen. Eugene McCarthy (D-MN), whom he met during a 1968 Democratic presidential primary campaign event and married the following year), his daughter Bethany, son Christopher, granddaughter Valentina, and lots of adoring fans.<\/p>\n

\"Peter
Peter Yarrow is shown here with AcousticMusicScene.com’s Michael Kornfeld in 2010. (Photo: Walter Hansen)<\/figcaption><\/figure>Editor\u2019s Note: I\u2019m glad that I got to see Peter Yarrow in concert and at various political events & social actions over the years and had the opportunity to meet and interview him for AcousticMusicScene.com and a couple other publications. <\/p>\n

Our folk community mourns his passing, as well as the recent deaths of Mike Brewer (a Missouri-based folk-rock singer-songwriter who, with his musical partner Tom Shipley, recorded the hit song \u201cOne Toke Over the Line\u201d), David Mallet (the Maine-based singer-songwriter best known for \u201cGarden Song\u201d), and Josh White, Jr. (a Michigan-based singer and guitarist who followed in his late father\u2019s folk and blues footsteps for decades).<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Peter Yarrow — the singer-songwriter and social activist best known as part of the seminal folk harmony trio Peter Paul & Mary — died at his home in New York City on January 7, 2025 following a four year-bout with bladder cancer. He was 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