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Peter Yarrow of ’60s folk trio Peter, Paul and Mary dies at 86

BBG News

On Tuesday, Peter Yarrow, a key figure in popularizing folk music during the 1960s as part of the three-member vocal group Peter, Paul and Mary, passed away at his residence in New York. He was 86 years old.

His death was confirmed by his publicist, Ken Sunshine, who said the cause was bladder cancer.

In the musical trio Peter, Paul and Mary, Yarrow was the tenor. His soft and careful singing was positioned between Noel Paul Stookey’s deep baritone and Mary Travers’ light contralto. He shared writing credit and provided the lead vocals for one of their most successful songs, “Puff the Magic Dragon,” which he adapted from a poem by Leonard Lipton. This song peaked at number 2 on Billboard’s Hot 100 chart in 1963.

Besides their popular hits, the trio also played beautifully harmonized versions of Pete Seeger’s “If I Had a Hammer (The Hammer Song)”, Bob Dylan’s “Blowin’ in the Wind”, which they performed during the famous March on Washington where Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech, and John Denver’s “Leaving on a Jet Plane”, a song that reached number one on the Hot 100 in 1969.

After Yarrow’s passing, only Stookey remains alive among Peter, Paul, and Mary, as Travers passed away in 2009 at 72 years old. (This version uses simpler language and a more conversational tone.)

Peter, Paul, and Mary leveraged their pop fame to highlight various progressive political issues such as peace and civil rights. However, Yarrow served three months in prison in 1970 due to a case of sexual misconduct involving a 14-year-old girl, for which he received a pardon from President Carter, who passed away last month at the age of 100.

This story will be updated.

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2025-01-07 22:01

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