Peter Yarrow, whose brooding and righteous vocals for the trio Peter, Paul and Mary helped set up them as one of the widespread folks acts of the Sixties, died Tuesday at his dwelling on Manhattan’s Higher West Aspect. He was 86.
His loss of life was confirmed by Ken Sunshine, his publicist. Mr Sunshine mentioned the trigger was bladder most cancers, which Mr Yarrow had been battling for the previous 4 years.
On most of the trio’s recordings, they break up the vocal elements equally, weaving Mr. Yarrow’s exact tenor round Noel Paul Stookey’s tender baritone and Mary Travers’ heat contralto. However Mr. Yarrow additionally had some distinguished lead vocals, showing on such well-known group information as “Puff the Magic Dragon,” “Day Is Finished” and “The Nice Mandala,” all of which he wrote or co-wrote. “Puff” grew to become a #2 hit on Billboard, whereas “Day Is Finished” entered the High 20.
Mr. Yarrow wrote many different songs recorded by the group, typically in collaboration with Mr. Stookey, the final surviving member of the group (Mrs. Travers died in 2009 at 72).
Of their peak years, Peter, Paul and Mary reached the Billboard High 40 12 occasions; six of those songs reached the High 10, together with one, their cowl of John Denver’s “Leavin’ on a Jet Aircraft,” which reached No. 1. They collected 5 Billboard High 10 albums and topped the album chart twice of the journal.
Like many people teams of the time, Peter, Paul and Mary have been recognized for his or her progressive politics as a lot as their music. In August 1963 they take part within the March on Washington, the location of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech. Acting on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, they sang Bob Dylan’s “Blowin’ within the Wind,” which they’d made right into a Billboard High 5 hit that month; their efficiency in Washington helped set up it as a civil rights anthem.
The trio additionally recorded songs and carried out in live performance in assist of liberal presidential candidate Eugene McCarthy in 1968. and George McGovern in 1972. Mr. Yarrow’s lyrics typically emphasised the band’s political dedication: “The Nice Mandala,” launched in 1967, tells the story of a battle protester on starvation strike; The Day is Over (1969), addressed to his son, means that the approaching technology can create a extra simply world.
“Day Is Finished” and “Puff the Magic Dragon,” each of which featured easy choruses and intentionally harmless viewpoints that doubled as nursery rhymes. Many years later, Mr. Yarrow turned each into an illustrated youngsters’s e book. “Puff” additionally impressed an animated tv particular in 1978 that was widespread sufficient to spawn two sequels.
Peter Yarrow was born on 31 Could 1938. in Manhattan to Bernard and Vera (Burtakoff) Yarrow, Jewish immigrants from Ukraine. His father, a lawyer, was an assistant district lawyer in New York underneath Thomas E. Dewey. He later grew to become vp of the CIA-funded group Radio Free Europe.
Mr. Yarrow’s dad and mom divorced when he was 5. His father later transformed to Protestantism, however Mr. Yarrow thought of Jewish teachings to be a serious inspiration in his life.
He studied drawing on the Excessive College of Music and Artwork (now the Fiorello H. LaGuardia Excessive College of Music and Artwork and Performing Arts) in Manhattan. Throughout school at Cornell, he started singing and taking part in the guitar after taking a course on American folks literature taught by folklorist and historian Harold William Thompson.
After commencement, Mr. Yarrow moved to New York and have become a performer within the prolific Greenwich Village folks scene. “I went in with the concept I wished to make music that creates group,” he advised music journal Rebeat in 2015. – music, he added, “that reaches folks’s hearts and mobilizes folks for a extra humane society.”
His success within the Village led to an invite to look on a CBS tv particular, “Folks Sound USA,” in 1960. This additionally earned him an opportunity to carry out on the Newport Folks Competition, the place he met Albert Grossman, the founding father of the pageant and the supervisor of singer Odette.
Mr. Grossman wished to kind a brand new group that may develop and replace the formulation of the Weavers, a folks concord group consisting of a lady and three males (certainly one of them Pete Seeger) that loved appreciable success within the Fifties . He paired Mr. Yarrow with Ms. Travers, who had appeared in nation golf equipment and sang a number of occasions with Mr. Seeger. The duo grew to become a trio when, at Ms Travers’ suggestion, they added Noel Paul Stokey, with whom she had performed at an area membership. Utilizing Mr. Stookey’s center title, they settled on the memorable biblical moniker.
The trio introduced a compelling visible: the 2 males, sporting darkish ties, goatee goatees and severe expressions, surrounded Ms. Travers, whose blond hair framed noble cheekbones. Mr. Grossman booked them for a run on the Bitter Finish on Bleecker Avenue, and there was a buzz. In 1961 the band signed with Warner Bros. Data, which launched their debut album, merely titled “Peter, Paul and Mary,” the next Could.
Mr. Yarrow sang lead on the group’s first single, “Lemon Tree,” primarily based on a Brazilian folks tune, which reached the Billboard High 40. The complete album rose to No. 1 after their second single, “If I Had a Hammer,” , written by Pete Seeger and Lee Hays of the Weavers, grew to become a High 10 hit and received two Grammy Awards. The album stayed within the High 20 for 2 years and offered greater than two million copies.
The band’s subsequent album, Movin’, launched in early 1963, included “Puff the Magic Dragon,” the lyrics of which have been primarily based on a poem {that a} buddy of Mr. Yarrow’s, Lenny Lipton, had written when he was at 19, impressed by an earlier poem by Ogden Nash entitled The Story of the Dragon Kestard. There was later hypothesis that the tune referred to smoking marijuana, an interpretation Mr. Yarrow strongly denied.
In June 1963 the trio launched their cowl of “Blowin’ within the Wind”. (Bob Dylan was one other shopper of Mr. Grossman’s.) About 300,000 copies have been offered within the first week. By mid-August it had reached quantity 2; it went on to promote greater than 1,000,000 copies. Their model of one other Dylan tune, “Do not Suppose Twice, It is All Proper,” cracked the Billboard High 10, propelling the author’s personal album, “The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan,” into the High 30.
In 1964 Mr Yarrow joins the board of the Newport Folks Competition. In 1970 he conceived the New People Live performance on the Kerrville Folks Competition in Texas, which grew to become an annual occasion. A yr earlier, he had helped arrange the Nationwide Mobilization to Finish the Conflict, an anti-Vietnam Conflict protest in Washington that drew about half 1,000,000 folks.
Peter, Paul and Mary scored the largest hit of their careers in 1970 when “Leavin’ on a Jet Aircraft,” that includes Ms. Travers’ wistful counterpoint, reached No. 1. However simply months later, they introduced their separation you might be.
They break up partly to pursue solo careers, but in addition as a result of Mr Yarrow was accused of sexually assaulting a 14-year-old woman who got here to his dressing room together with her 17-year-old sister searching for an autograph in 1969. He served three months of 1 to a few years in jail after pleading responsible to “indecent acts” with the woman.
In 1981 Mr. Yarrow obtained a presidential pardon from Jimmy Carter, though the case continued to be a problem for a few years throughout campaigns for politicians Mr. Yarrow supported.
In 2019, on the peak of the #MeToo motion in opposition to sexual assault in opposition to girls, Mr. Yarrow’s scheduled efficiency at an arts pageant in upstate New York was cancelled in response to the protests. A remorseful Mr Yarrow responded in a press release, saying the organizers’ option to exclude him was not “unfair or unjust”.
“I don’t search to downplay or excuse what I’ve carried out, and I can’t adequately specific my apologies and sorrow for the ache and harm I’ve brought about,” he mentioned in a press release to The New York Occasions.
In 1969 Mr. Yarrow married Marybeth McCarthy, niece of Democratic presidential candidate Eugene McCarthy. (Mr. Stookey wrote a “Wedding ceremony Track” that has since been carried out of their honor at wedding ceremony ceremonies around the globe.) The wedding resulted in divorce, however they remarried in 2022. Apart from her, Mr. Yarrow is survived by a son, Christopher; a daughter, Bethany; and a granddaughter.
Mr. Yarrow launched his first solo album, titled Peter, in 1972, however gross sales have been poor. He loved far more success 4 years later with “Torn Between Two Lovers,” a tune he wrote with Phillip Jarrell that grew to become a No. 1 hit for common pop singer Mary McGregor.
Peter, Paul and Mary reunited for one-off profit live shows in 1972 and 1978. After their second reunion, they started touring commonly and continued to play till Mrs. Travers’ loss of life. Within the years since, Mr. Yarrow and Mr. Stookey have performed collectively periodically.
In a press release on Tuesday, Mr Stookey referred to as Mr Yarrow his “artistic, irrepressible, spontaneous and musical little brother”, however added that he had additionally “grown to understand and love the mature knowledge past his years and inspirational steerage, which he shared with me as an older brother.’
“Maybe Peter was each the brothers I by no means had,” Mr Stookey mentioned, “and I’ll miss them each deeply.”
Within the yr 2000 Mr. Yarrow helped launch Operation Respect, a non-profit group devoted to combating bullying and selling tolerance amongst youngsters.
Later in life he typically performed along with his daughter and cellist Rufus Cappadocia in a trio referred to as Peter, Bethany and Rufus. Their success strengthened Mr. Yarrow’s religion in his chosen style.
“I imagine that people music has a constructive impact on the decency, humanity and empathy of society,” he advised Reuters in 2008. “Peter, Paul and Mary had an enormous viewers, a few of whom disagreed with our politics. However they have been touched by the human essence of our songs.”
Ash Wu contributed reporting.
