The Soundtrack Of Our Lives

September 27, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Soundtrack Of Our Lives 

The Soundtrack of Our Lives looks back at some of the music that was popular, and the performers who were influential, around the time, forty years ago in 1969, when Richard Nixon became POTUS.

PETER, PAUL & MARY

Mary Travers died on 16 September.  Although, technically, she was only one third of Peter, Paul & Mary, in this case the third was greater than the sum of the parts.  Peter and Paul were immensely talented.  But Mary’s voice, her looks, and her mystique made her the memorable one.   Her strong, urgent, plangent voice stands out on the Soundtrack of Our Lives in the 1960s, commanding respect and demanding that attention be paid.

She was born in Louisville, but she grew up in Greenwich Village.  Her parents were journalists and labor organizers, and by the time she was in her teens, Mary was absorbing the music and the politics of the Village coffee houses.  Pete Seeger lived in the same  building as the Travers family, and while she was still in high school her singing group —the Song Swappers— supplied backup for some Seeger records.

Although she was occasionally coaxed to step on stage to sing alone, her close to paralyzing stage fright might have put paid to a serious career — save for the timely intervention of Albert Grossman.

Grossman was a Chicago manager and impresario.  As a showcase for his acts he opened the Gate of Horn, a club whose small size and unprepossessing basement location were quickly overshadowed by its legendary reputation.  He specialized in folk acts; in 1959 he was a co-founder of the Newport Folk Festival.  One of his clients was a young Cornell graduate named Peter Yarrow.

The Fury and the Sound: uber-manager Albert Grossman (left) and master-arranger Milt Okun — the team that created PP&M.

Grossman watched the growing success of groups of essentially buttoned-down frat boys —like the Kingston Trio, the Brothers Four, the Limeliters, the Highwaymen, and the Chad Mitchell Trio— whose repertoire included folky material.  And there were a number of waif-like or well-scrubbed young female performers emerging —like Joan Baez and her sister Mimi Farina, Carolyn Hester, and Judy Collins—  whose vibe was early Birkenstock.

And Albert Grossman also saw the one thing that would be required to take folk mainstream: Glamour.

So, like a casting agent, he set out to find another relatively nerdish goateed dude like Yarrow, to supply a mildly edgy but totally non-threatening coffee house vibe, as the non-distracting background for a tall, striking, blonde of absolutely staggering beauty (and, incidentally, with a very good voice).  For the former role he found Noel Paul Stookey.  And for the latter, he found Mary Travers, who met all his criteria and also had a great voice.

And, thanks to Grossman’s marketing insight, her stage fright was irrelevant; because all she had to do was stand there and sing.  She would be the purposely silent vessel of every fan’s fantasy.

David Hajdu, whose Positively Fourth Street chronicles the early days of the folk movement in Greenwich Village, observed that “She had a kind of sexual confidence combined with intelligence, edginess and social consciousness — a potent combination.  If you look at clips of their performances, the camera fixates on her.  The act was all about Mary.”

Grossman teamed PP&M up with the singer, producer, arranger Milt Okun.  It was an inspired pairing.  Okun had cut his teeth with Harry Belafonte, and he understood how to make meaningful material commercial.

The new group, known as Peter, Paul & Mary (Noel Stookey adopted his middle name to make things more alliterative) made their debut at the Bitter End in Greenwich Village in 1961.

Their first album, released on the Warner label in May 1962, was the eponymous Peter, Paul and Mary. There were  a few original Yarrow/Stookey songs, but the standouts were Will Holt’s “Lemon Tree,”  Hedy West’s “500 Miles,” Pete Seeger’s “Where Have All the Flowers Gone,” and the Seeger-Lee Hays anthem “If I Had a Hammer.”

Where it all started: The Bitter End opened in 1961 at 147 Bleecker Street in the heart of Greenwich Village. PP&M made their debut there that year.

“If I Had a Hammer” was written in 1949 and recorded by the Weavers.  It remained popular but unexceptional  as an all-purpose agitpropy  anthem until PP&M covered it and introduced it to America via Billboard’s Top Ten.  The song won PP&M the 1962 Grammys for Best Performance by a Vocal Group and Best Folk Recording.

Their second album, 1963’s Moving, contained a song co-written by Yarrow and Lenny Lipton, and a fellow Cornell undergrad.  It reached Number Two on the Top Ten, and has become one of the most widely-covered, beloved, and controversial songs in the pop canon: “Puff.”

Some time later, Lenny Lipton —who went on to become a writer, filmmaker, and inventor— addressed the urban legends that quickly surrounded poor Puff:

It was in the spring of 1959 that I wrote the poem that became the song Puff, the Magic Dragon.  I was a freshman at Cornell.  I had been at the library at Willard Straight Hall, the Student Union building, and I’d read a sentimental poem about a dragon by Ogden Nash.  As I walked down State Street to the apartment of Peter Yarrow – who became the “Peter” of Peter, Paul and Mary, and who set my poem to music – I thought to myself, “I can do better than Ogden Nash’s poem about a dragon.”  Maybe I did.

Puff, the Magic Dragon has been interpreted – usually misinterpreted – time and again by many people.  When a work is out there people are free to interpret it any way they want.  I think Puff, the Magic Dragon is about a little boy and a dragon.

Immediately after the Peter, Paul and Mary’s recording came out in 1962, Dorothy Kilgallen, who was a columnist in a New York newspaper (it might have been the Daily News) wrote a piece saying that Puff, the Magic Dragon was about marijuana, hah-hah-hah-poke-in-the-ribs.

When I wrote Puff I didn’t know from marijuana.  We’re talking about Cornell in 1958.  People were going to hootenannies – they weren’t smoking joints.  It was Pete Seeger and “Michael, Row Your Boat Ashore,” not  ”One Toke Over the Line Sweet Jesus.”

This clip —from a concert in Sydney in 1964— gives a good idea of the division of labor in PP&M.  Peter, who was in fact the leader, was the studly anchorman; Paul was the klass klown; and Mary was Mary nuff said.  (There is an element of you-really-had-to-be-there to the opening banter; for the impatient the song kicks in around 1:58.)

“Puff” and its tremendous success, didn’t do much to endear PP&M to the increasingly suspicious —and jealous— purists who saw them selling out the  folk movement’s heritage for a mess —admittedly a really big mess— of pottage.   Their repertoire was dismissed as derivative; their exquisitely honed harmonies were dissed as homogenized.  On stage, Joan Baez joked about “Peter, Paul and Misery.”

But nothing succeeds like success.  And, besides, their progressive bona fides couldn’t be questioned.  They sang for Dr. King at his March on Washington.  And they marched in Selma.

Their third LP, In the Wind, was released late in ’63. It represented a major turning point in four careers — those of Peter, Paul, and Mary, and that of Bob Dylan.  Among its tracks were two of his songs — “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right” and the one for which it was named: “Blowin in the Wind.”

They had released “Blowin’ in the Wind” as a single 45-RPM in July —in time for Martin Luther King Jr.’s March on Washington.  It sold three hundred thousand copies the first week and reached Number Two on the Billboard Hot 100.  Thanks to it, PP&M once again retired the Grammys for Best Vocal Performance by a Group and Best Folk Recording

To this point, Dylan’s own two albums on Columbia had attracted a small, if ardent, following. But his weird voice and sparse arrangements were still very much an acquired taste. Joan Baez, already engaged in the famous affair that she later chronicle in “Diamonds and Rust,” was singing his songs and bringing him onstage at her gigs (sometimes very much to the disapproval of her fans).

But it was PP&M’s cover of “Blowin’ in the Wind” —just at the time when Dr. King and the civil rights movement was riveting America’s attention— that made the trio one of the handful of major national mainstream acts, and made Dylan the premier folk artist both as writer and performer.

1964’s live album In Concert opened with another Dylan song that captured the American mood and became another PP&M signature: “The Times They Are A-Changin’”  Again, their smooth harmonies ameliorated the song’s bitter diagnosis and painful prescription.

Come gather ’round people
Wherever you roam
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown
And accept it that soon
You’ll be drenched to the bone.
If your time to you
Is worth savin’
Then you better start swimmin’
Or you’ll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin’.

Come writers and critics
Who prophesize with your pen
And keep your eyes wide
The chance won’t come again
And don’t speak too soon
For the wheel’s still in spin
And there’s no tellin’ who
That it’s namin’.
For the loser now
Will be later to win
For the times they are a-changin’.

Come senators, congressmen
Please heed the call
Don’t stand in the doorway
Don’t block up the hall
For he that gets hurt
Will be he who has stalled
There’s a battle outside
And it is ragin’.
It’ll soon shake your windows
And rattle your walls
For the times they are a-changin’.

Come mothers and fathers
Throughout the land
And don’t criticize
What you can’t understand
Your sons and your daughters
Are beyond your command
Your old road is
Rapidly agin’.
Please get out of the new one
If you can’t lend your hand
For the times they are a-changin’.

The line it is drawn
The curse it is cast
The slow one now
Will later be fast
As the present now
Will later be past
The order is
Rapidly fadin’.
And the first one now
Will later be last
For the times they are a-changin’.

PP&M’s repertoire continued to include original compositions, traditional ballads, and songs by established folkies like Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, and Ewan MacColl.  But they also began to feature new young talents, and the mass audience they provided helped launch or advance the careers of artists like Tom Paxton, Fred Neil, John Denver, Laura Nyro, and Gordon Lightfoot.

On the 1965 album A Song Will Rise, PP&M introduced “For Lovin’ Me” by a young Canadian singer-song Gordon Lightfoot.

Gordon Lightfoot’s 1964 song “Early Morning Rain” —recorded on PP&M’s 1965 album See What Tomorrow Brings— is one of my favorite PP&M songs.  The arrangement favors Paul, who manages to capture and convey the emptiness and loneliness of this hobo train song updated to the realities of late 20th Century transportation.

In 1967 PP&M included John Denver’s “Leaving on a Jet Plane” as a track on their Album 1700.   Two years later —at the end of 1969— the song was released as a 45-RPM single and became PP&M’s biggest hit.  It was also their last; they disbanded at the end of 1970 in order to pursue solo projects.

Denver originally called the song “Oh Babe I Hate To Go,” but Milt Okun —who was now also his producer— convinced him to change the title.  In this clip —which was filmed the end of October ‘69  at the Cellar Door in Washington DC  for a locally-produced PBS series called Something To Sing About— the composer sings along

The extensive PP&M catalog —including the various solo albums by each member after the group disbanded, and the several reunion albums that ensued— is easily available (as on Amazon).

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