MARY TRAVERS, the clarion-voiced female third of the quintessential folk trio Peter, Paul and Mary whose harmony-laden recordings of politically-minded songs by Bob Dylan and Pete Seeger ushered them to the top of the sales charts in the 1960s, has died aged 72 after battling leukaemia for several years.
Travers died in Connecticut, where she’d lived most of her life at Danbury Hospital, where her mother had been head of public relations for many years. She’d been diagnosed in 2004 with leukaemia but had undergone a successful bone marrow transplant procedure in 2006 that had, for a time, eradicated the blood disease.
“In her final months, Mary handled her declining health in the bravest, most generous way imaginable,” her long-time musical partner Peter Yarrow wrote in a note posted on her website, www.marytravers.com. “She never complained. She avoided expressing her emotional and physical distress, trying not to burden those of us who loved her, especially her wonderfully caring and attentive husband, Ethan.
“Her love for me and Noel Paul (Stookey) and for Ethan, poured out with great dignity and without restraint. It was, as Mary always was, honest and completely authentic,” Yarrow wrote. “That’s the way she sang, too; honestly and with complete authenticity.”
Peter, Paul and Mary picked up the folk music torch that the Kingston Trio had ignited in the late 1950s with a string of best-selling albums and brought a more contemporary and socially-conscious edge, making Top 10 pop hits out of If I Had a Hammer (The Hammer Song), written the previous decade by Seeger and Lee Hays of the Weavers, and Dylan's Blowin' in the Wind.
They also gave early boosts to the careers of Gordon Lightfoot and John Denver by recording their songs. Decades after the trio helped bring Dylan's music to the masses, Travers said Blowin' in the Windwas the song that still resonated the strongest for her.
Even though Peter, Paul and Mary took socially-minded folk music to a commercial pinnacle that’s never been repeated, earning them numerous gold and platinum records and five Grammy awards, Yarrow said in 1999, “I think we were a link, and I’m proud of that. But I don’t want to overstate our role.”
At that time, Travers added: “Peter, Paul and Mary were at the top of the charts in pop music in the 60s when folk music was pop music. That was a blip on the screen. Nobody who sang folk songs then or now is really consumed with the need to be part of pop music.”