We will know that she is gone: RIP Mary Travers
Mary Travers, of the 60s’ Peter Paul and Mary, is dead at seventy-two.
There were three people in that group, but Mary was its beating heart. The two men seemed to be merely her backup singers (sorry Peter, sorry Paul), although they contributed the songwriting and important harmony. The blend of their voices was lovely, but hers was the one that needed to be there.
Beautiful in a 60s, Julie-Christie-esque way, with her shining fall of straight blond hair that gleamed in the spotlights, Mary was sexy as a starlet. But she sang with a remarkable lack of narcissism. It was all about the song and the sound and the intensity; self came in a very distant second, if at all. Her signature head toss wasn’t so much to show off her coif as to add punctuation to the lyrics and that throaty voice that had a special deeply ringing tone.
Although you can hardly go wrong watching any of the old Peter Paul and Mary clips on You Tube, here’s my personal favorite, with Mary as the featured singer. The lyrics seem especially poignant right now—“If you miss the train I’m on, you will know that I am gone…” [note: the video I chose disappeared from YouTube and is now unwatchable, so I’m substituting this one, which has much poorer visuals but is at least operating]:
Okay, I couldn’t resist another video. I chose this one not because it’s such a great song, but because it highlights the sexy side of Mary (and that famous hair toss) in a “groovier,” late-60s version. Love those sleeves:
Here’s the group in the flush of youth:
And here age and Mary’s illness had taken its toll:
RIP.
[NOTE: As for Mary’s far Left politics—which she came by almost inevitably, from her parents, entire upbringing, and milieu—they didn’t and don’t affect the music, at least for me. As a teenager and young adult, when I was a fan, I wasn’t even aware of them. Unlike someone like Jane Fonda, Mary’s activism was mainly confined to rallies, demonstrations, and benefits.
An interesting political footnote is that, when she had a bone marrow transplant to try to halt the progression of her leukemia (the transplant was successful initially but she died from complications of chemotherapy), this story was revealed of her meeting with her donor, a stranger named Mary DeWitt Hessen:
“This is a very special woman to whom I owe everything,” Travers said after meeting Hessen for the first time…
The women sat side by side backstage, clasping hands as Hessen’s husband, Mike, watched with daughters Laura, 14, and Diana, 13. Besides their shared first name, both have two daughters. When she discovered that, Travers said, “I thought, ‘This was meant to be.’ “…
Hessen, 46, sells insurance in Lake Orion, Mich. She joined the registry when a boy at her church was diagnosed with leukemia. She wasn’t a match for him. After she found out she was a match for someone else, she almost decided she didn’t want to meet the recipient. “You never know who you’re going to help,” Hessen says.
Travers, 69, a longtime Democratic activist, joked before knowing the identity of her donor that she hoped it wasn’t a Republican. “So I get on the phone with Mary and I say, ‘Oh, we had this joke.’ And there’s this pause, and she says, ‘But I am a Republican.’ It has added a certain kind of vigor to my bones, but it hasn’t changed my throat ”” or my politics.”
“A certain kind of vigor”—I like that.]
Thanks for the article. I have always loved her voice and she was an inspiration to me when I was younger. I like the irony that her doner was a republican and that it probably churned her blood up and her stretcher her thinking.
I’ve always been fond of ’60s folkies, and remember Peter, Paul and Mary fondly. Not from the ’60s, of course, since I’m part of “Generation X,” born in 1970. I was introduced to PP&M by an elementary school teacher, who brought in an album by them for morning “sharing” time, when we would do sing alongs to “500 Miles,” “Lemon Tree,” and “Blowin in the Wind.”
I also remember that around that time, there was a cartoon called “Puff the Magic Dragon,” which featured a several PP&M songs: “Weave Me the Sunshine,” and the namesake “Puff the Magic Dragon.”
In the ’80s, my politics, then and now, is not rigid to either right or left. I was an ardent young teenage Reaganite, who appreciated Reagan’s strong anticommunist foreign policy, and positive pro-America optimism. But I also was aware of the positive things that came out of 20th century progressivism/liberalism: the civil right movement, for example. I remember watching, then, Peter, Paul and Mary concerts on (where else) my local PBS station… with the trio serenading aging baby Boomers, then in their “Big Chill”/Thirtysomething stage.
Good memories.
Anyway, I wish Mary Travers a fond farewell, to that Land Called Honalee in the sky.
RIP, Mary Travers.
Oh jeez, that bring me back. I’m weeping up as I type, because their music meant so much to me. I am now a “racist, hating, conservative” and she would have hated me, but what she never knew was how liberal (small “L”) a true conservative is.
Their music inspired my love of music.
I will miss her terribly, and I wish with all my heart that the liberal’s of today could feel my pain.
Ah lord, “Five Hundred Miles” is far and away my favorite PP&M song and the best cover of that as well.
In spite of my change, I never lost my ability to listen to PP&M. For me they epitomized that wide open, good and clean feeling of the early sixties, when all good things seemed possible and without the use of drugs.
What a wonderful voice Mary had.
While Mary Travers is not the lead singer in Early in the Morning, it is one of my PP&M favorites, for its harmonizing and energy.
Years before she died, I felt sadness towards Mary Travers and PP&M . It saddened me to discover that the makers of such beautiful music could also be forceful advocates for repugnant politics, when they palled around with the Sandinistas in the 1980s.
My opposition to the Sandinistas also was the definitive piece in my falling out with the left, so PP&M’s embrace of the Sandinistas is something that sticks with me. Having lived and worked in Latin America, my intuitive stance towards the left was that it presented a bad solution to Latin America’s problems. Extensive library research before the days of the web proved the correctness of my intuition: just like Ronnie said, and I DON’T mean Ronnie Gilbert, the Sandinistas were a bunch of Soviet-embracing commies. (I will spare you the results of my extensive research.) They were not Soviet plants: they fell into the laps of the Soviets of their own accord. As I had been gassed in Berkeley during anti-Vietnam War demonstrations when Ronnie was govenor, to conclude that Ronnie was correct on some issue was a sea change for me.
By the end of the 1980s, I discovered that PP&M, a group whose music I had grown up on and adored, were on opposite sides of the political fence from me and Ronnie. PP&M hadn’t changed; I had. In any event, my musical tastes had changed, so that was the primary reason why I listened little to them in later years. (Peter Yarrow had also campaigned to free Soviet Jewry, so I cannot say I completely disagreed with his and PP&M’s activism during that time.)
Neo’s point about Mary being raised in the far-left milieu in NYC is well taken. She attended the Little Red Schoolhouse, which numbers among its alumni such luminaries of the left as Kathy Boudin, Angela Davis,Robert Meeropol, Michael Meeropol, and Victor Navasky. Also note the number of Red Diaper Babies among that list. She also sang with Pete Seeger while still in high school. So yes to the manor born she was, in a manner of speaking.
She sure go ugly fast — was my only impression.
It’s been a lousy summer for obits.
Jim Carroll, a favorite poet, writer, and short-term rock phenom, died last week on 9-11 of a heart attack at the age of 60.
“I miss you more than all the others….”
**got
nyomythus: not that fast: there are probably 40 years between the last and next-to-last photo.
I got a PP&M album in the very early Sixties and practically wore it out. I was a kid at the time and read the first, and only good, Norton Witch World story listening to that album. Over and over.
Sad to see them, especially Mary, going the Pete Seeger route.
‘This was meant to be.’
Perhaps it was meant to be. Maybe it helped Mary Travers grow up and realize that demonizing the humanity of your political opponents is a pile of crap. The woman saved her life and didn’t even know who she was. Truthfully, I didn’t find the story particularly amusing. Revealing, perhaps, but not amusing. It’s never too late to grow up, I guess, and learn to be a better person. I’m glad Mary did recognize this, “This is a very special woman to whom I owe everything.”
Sorry for the negative tone but, honestly, don’t even joke about the person saving your life being a Republican. It’s just obnoxiously wrong. I’m saying this upon returning to my house from an aborted attempt (due to mechanical problems with the harvesting machine) to donate platelets that go to save the lives of kids with leukemia and other people with very serious medical conditions. Do you really care what political philosophy I subscribe to? Would you care if it was going to save the life of your child? “Liberals” suck when they politicize everything with their illiberal mindset. It’s tedious and obnoxious.
I hope Mary went to the grave a better person for what she went through. RIP.
i always liked puff….
here is when they had recently written it
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wik2uc69WbU
and here they are much later
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3OiOlnoyljk
and i never thought it was about the wicked weed
even at a very early age i got that childhood ends and adults have other things. I can not listen to cat stevens cats in the cradle.
hope those tapes got your frisson on! 🙂
Remember
A dragon lives forever, so inside all of us, puff hides in his cave.
he comes out again when we have children, and grandchildren.
Sad to see them, especially Mary, going the Pete Seeger route.
Well, Pete Seeger missed the window by about fifty years, but he did finally repudiate Stalinism.
In one of my last emails to my church’s email list after a glorious multiple-post cluster-hate of “Why I Can’t Forgive George Bush”, I told them, “I am George Bush.”
I am also Mary Travers.
I am also Pete Seeger.
Thanks for this post. I’ve never lost my love for the folk singing of the sixties and 70’s…. my real formative years. Aside from the longing and poignant lyrics, they were just plain beautiful, and Peter, Paul and Mary were just plain classics…..with class, no matter their politics. As a young child I memorized many of their songs… They were the staple of summer camp fire gatherings, and part of my growing up. They’ll never leave me.
Some 20 years or so ago, a friend of mine sang in a chorale society in New York and they did a Christmas time concert w/ Peter, Paul and Mary — something I couldn’t pass up. I remember being surprised at how “old” they looked. (Never mind that I had grown equally older as they, but somehow you just remember those classic photos on album covers. But the moment they began to sing, time melted away, and Mary’s rich and deep-throated voice carried me across time. Listening to them always will.
I didn’t know Mary had leukemia. I know how difficult it can be, even when today one can live many, many years if the disease is diagnosed when in the chronic form, as opposed to acute. Some 8 years ago, a veritable “miracle” drug was developed which actually is chemo in pill form and attacks the disease at the molecular level so it can actually put patients in remission with absolutely no sign of it in the blood and even on the molecular level — but it is not a cure. It does, however, let people live relatively normal lives for years. I know because my brother was diagnosed with CML (Chronic myelogenic leukemia) about 5 years ago. I am a perfect tissue match (his only one), but he does not want to undergo all that a bone marrow transplant entails. It’s quite difficult, and usually, without a sibling match, the results are rarely sucessful for any length of time. At least for now.
Mary Travers: you enriched many lives. Mine is one of those and I will carry you with me always. Thanks. I hope you now rest in peace. You gave a great gift to many.
wrt ol’ Pete, it took half a century and a good deal of pressure–says Jamie Glazov.
I may have mentioned this earlier. You can search for Seeger and “Reuben James” and one of the first hits goes into the group’s decision that the previous anti-war album was politically obsolete–the Germans having in the meantime invaded Russia–and so they switched without a moment’s hesitation.
I ran a marrow donor volunteer drive for a pastor from a liberal church–more liberal than mine, the PCUSA–and had to endure Reagan jokes while we worked together.
Then I got the call from the center to take the second test and I called the guy and told him if it were for him, he might discover a strange attraction to National Review.
I didn’t make the next cut and the pastor got his transplant from somebody else, but the secondaries got him. Well, he might have been reading NR to this day. Got off easy, I guess.
I have been listening to PP&M since I was nine. I still listen some almost every day sitting at my computer. I have been singing babies to sleep with “Hush-A-Bye” for 30 years, and now my daughter does too.
Bye, Mary.
And, no, there’s no way it would change her politics.
When my son was tearing up the local high school league in several sports, I told him that big guys with good hand-eye coordination were…big guys with good hand-eye coordination. Other virtues were independent of that and not to let the old guys at church who always wanted to talk to him, and the cheerleaders, etc, convince he he was somebody without him actually being somebody. Seemed to have worked.
Point is, you can have a terrific larynx and a head full of resonant sinuses and you are…capable of making great sounds. Doesn’t mean squat otherwise.
Joan Baez had so much resonance chambering replacing brain tissue that she actually thought that the goal of the antiwar movement was peace and freedom in Viet Nam. When she inquired about it, she was accused by, among others, Jane Fonda as being some kind of crypto better-dead-than-red moron.
Talk about being clueless and unclear on the concept about which she sang with such innocent, ignorant passion.
Well, Mary can schmooze with her FMLN buddies about the boring, bourgeois elections going on in El Salvador.
I started playing guitar in the early sixties. Folk music at first, because it was easiest to play. Peter, Paul and Mary were some of the tunes I learned. Then I discovered electric guitars – sustain, feed back, fuzz tones, power chords, wah-wah pedals, and Leo Fender’s pride and joy. PP&M were a part of it.
Mary Travers and PPM bring back the memories of coming of age in the ’60. We had a lot of folk music. It was the days of hootenanny, after all.
On another sad note, Henry Gibson died yesterday. he will forever be associated with “Laugh In”. When I got my first job, I quickly learned I had to watch Laugh In because that is the only thing my customers would talk about the next day.
Rick
Musicians are musicians. Artists are artists. Like Richard Aubrey says, the possession of a good set of vocal chords means nothing about making good judgment on political issues.
Bob Dylan showed some wisdom when he removed himself from politics many years ago. The Dixie Chicks found out that a political stance can alienate much of their fan base, resulting in reduced revenue. I recall Michael Jordan professing political neutrality at some point, implying that half his fans/customers were Republicans.
At least Mary Travers and Joan Baez had good voices. I recently did a local library search to find a copy of an obscure folk song, and found it on a Pete Seeger CD set. I soon found out that these days I can’t tolerate any more than 2-3 minutes of the Pete Seeger whine, all politics aside. That is also about my limit for listening to hip-hop/rap.
Trivia notice regarding Joan Baez. In my high school physics class in the 60s , I saw some short instructional film in which my physics teacher informed us Joan Baez’s father, a physics prof at UC Berkeley, had played some part. Narrator, producer, whatever.
I don’t mean to hijack the thread, but Gringo just touched on something. The conventional wisdom holds that Bob Dylan angered folk music traditionalists by playing electric starting in 1965, but the truth is a little more complex.
Many of the folk musicians were leftists, and Dylan began alienating them even before he went electric by turning his back on writing overtly political “protest songs”. He began writing songs with more personal–and even surrealistic–lyrics, which left the leftist folkies scratching their heads. They thought they had a perfect spokesman for their cause, but he turned away from all that, and they resented him.
In the booklet that accompanies the “Live 1966” two disc set, it says that the hecklers at his Manchester, England concert that year were members of the Scottish Communist Party.
Getting back to Mary, I was a little kid during PP&M’s heyday and have a very dim recollection of the “Puff the Magic Dragon” cartoon. As far as I can tell, their cover of “Blowin’ in the Wind” put Dylan on the map. Lots of folk musicians covered his songs in the early 60s, but that one was especially huge.
Youtube has a couple of songs from the original Brothers Four, performing at, I think, UCLA. The camera pans the audience and “rapt” doesn’t even start describing it.
Some of this folk stuff had power.
But, outside, cities were burning, there were riots, the old order was upside down and nobody knew what was going on, there were assassinations, two or three hundred guys a week were dying in Viet Nam.
Sure a relief to go to a concert like that.
I remember listening to a lot of Peter, Paul & Mary, the Beatles and Bob Dylan when I was a kid. It was 1965 and we had one of those stereo consoles. We were living in base housing in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.
I think it soothed my mom.
You see my dad was an Army Major and a student at the war college. A year later he shipped out to Vietnam.
He did another tour in ’71. Lifetime conservative. Mom too.
I have very mixed feelings about the 1960s, the “counterculture” and the protests of that era. In my teen years, during the 1980s, I was very much a misfit, and the noncomformity and rebelliousness and questioning of authority of that era had a strong appeal. Of course, it was easy to derive pleasure from the sixties, in my ’80s suburban room with the Sgt. Pepper album (or Hendrix, or Dylan) on the stereo… in an era when Reagan was safely in office, and “the sixties” were a hazy memory, filtered into a sanitized version that kept all the Che Guevara/Ho Chi Minh/radical nonsense to a minimum.
In retrospect, there is still a lot that I derived from my adolescent nostalgia for an era already past. (I was born in 1970: the year the Beatles broke up, and of Kent State, and of Apollo 13.) I read a lot, and listened to a lot, and and developed a sense of individualism (one that seems strangely absent from today’s so-called “liberalism), and a sense of questioning things (now mostly used against the left!), and a sense of standing up for things. So, it all wasnt bad.
I like to keep in mind those ’60s figures that followed their consceinces to the right. Changers, as Neo would say. (Although some are erratic in their new stance… which is okay, ’cause I can be erratic myself!)
Arlo Guthrie is now a libertarian Ron Paul Republican who opposes big givernment Obamacare and excessive Union influence. He also said he likes Sarah Palin.
Dennis Hopper, of Easy Rider fame, is also a Republican. He was converted to being a conservative Republican in 1980 by Reagan, and has voted a straight GOP ticket ever since… except for in 2008 (because, alas, he did not like Sarah Palin).
James Meredith, the civil rights hero who de-segragated the University of Mississippi, became a staunch conservative Republican.
Congess of Racial Equality leader Roy Innis becamse a libertarian conservative and gun rights activist.
Eldridge Cleaver, of the Black panthers, became a conservative Reaganite Republican in the 1980s.
And two more, these a little less idological, and more more erratic…. Eugene McCarthy supported Reagan and his SDI back in the ’80s, and Neil Young (of Crosby Stills Nash and Young) also supported Reagan. Both reverted back to the left (or at least to whatever each was, which in both cases is not entirely clear) since.
I was going to provide links, but Im tired of typin’, and its all easily googled.
Peace. 🙂
Vieux.
I remember those days. When you drove to somebody’s residence, you called first so they didn’t think you were notifying.
If we were off post in uniform, we drove without our cover for the same reason.
Recall one time I pulled up to a home to deliver the bad news. I had to park a couple of houses down and the people there, going someplace in a car, gaped at me in terror. But I wasn’t going to their home. Figure they felt guilty they were relieved it was their neighbor’s kid got killed.
Some memories are better than others and some won’t go away.
And some of these songs I could do without, strictly as a matter of association.
One more erratic Libertarian Republican:
Former Grateful Dead lyricist and also formerly Dick Cheney’s Congressional campaign manager John Perry Barlow
(Of course, he also has said he was an anarchist, along with some other things… so I guess he’s more (small l) libertarian than Republican.)
Travers, 69, a longtime Democratic activist, joked before knowing the identity of her donor that she hoped it wasn’t a Republican.
Would people still love her if she joked before knowing the identity of her donor that she hoped it wasn’t a Jew?
Hahahahaha…. Hilarious….
I’m Gen X, too. She was never but a loopy old bitch in my lifetime. Buh-bye….
J.L.:
I was hopeful when Neil Young wrote and recorded the song “Let’s Roll” after 9/11. But then, alas, he became outspokenly anti-Bush.
Good to hear that about Arlo.
rickl:
Yeah. I’ve kind-of come to accept that these people are artists, which sometimes makes them a little spacey and makes them attracted to a lot of “pie in the sky” ideals.
I’m just glad some of them are at least willing to try to give non-leftist ideas a try… even if they fell compelled to stay in the anarcho-libertarian part of the Right.
correction…
“feel compelled”
I suppose most folks already know this, but you can catch a lot of those old performances on youtube.
Ian and Sylvia have quite a few going.
Kingston Trio has some good ones.
The old Brothers Four–not the new and resurrected group–covers “Five hundred miles”.
My brother had the album where their names are written in chalk on a brick wall behind them, and I played that album a bazillion times.
The song about the young woman who dresses in a man’s uniform to join her beloved (I guess it would have been the Civil War?) used to slay me.
Very sad news today…
mike: “The Cruel War Is Raging.” Believe me, when my boyfriend went to Vietnam, that one and “Leaving On a Jet Plane” were very big favorites of mine.
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neo.
So you had a Vietvet for a boyfriend. Gee. You don’t write that old. I’d figured you’d read up on those days.
Ian and Sylvia did some good stuff without the progressive baggage.
Puts me in mind of some old folkie group I saw on television decades ago. They were a resurrected bunch from the Thirties. A couple still had good pipes. I remember the complacent, superior smiles they had when they came to the line, ‘The fields are free from corporate greed.”
Man, you’d have had to pay me to go to one of those concerts. Go out whistling that tune, by golly.
PPM did a lot of covers (Dylan obviously), but also young up & comers like John Denver (“Leaving on a Jet Plane”) and Gordon Lightfoot (“In the Early Morning Rain”). Lightfoot’s voice still astounds.
I’ve long since rationalized (and ignored) the politics of most of my favorite artists, John Lennon being the best example. I never let his naive radicalism interfere with the majesty of his craft. Pete Seeger’s a bit more difficult. A wayward commie with a banjo. Ignore the former, enjoy the latter.
kcom, it’s worse than that. She also said “Well a Republican has finally done something for me.” I hope she was trying to be funny, but she comes off as an ingrate of the highest order.
I was a coffee house old folkie, playing Seeger, PPM, and Woody and Arlo tunes. Part of the Folk Song Army with my 12-string. What a prick I was.
I still love much of the music, but the self-righteousness was not an unfortunate add-on – it was central to the culture. I have never quite gotten past that after my long march to the right.
You other old folkies can have fun laughing at yourself by renting “A Mighty Wind.” I used to write songs like that, which both pinches and amuses me now.
Never liked PPM’s politics, even when I was a teenager (it’s accurate to say I’m a lifelong conservative), but I enjoyed their music. My personal favorite was Mary’s version (minus P&P) of “Follow Me”, written by John Denver, IIRC. I bought the whole LP (remember those?) for that song only, and played it until you could almost hear the other side of the record.
So many artistic types have loony politics that I almost don’t consider it worth mentioning. But some, Ted Nugent and Alice Cooper come to mind, eventually track back to the right and stay there. Or were there all along and never made a big deal about it.
It’s funny, not so long ago, I `ripped’ many long-playing records I’d owned for years, to digital format – including several PPM records.
I like PPM a lot, but here’s the funny thing: they were as `artificial’ as the Monkees.
Albert Grossman – he later shepherded the early career one of Bobby Zimmerman – saw how popular folk-revival music was becoming at the end of the 1950s.
He set out to create a contrived band consisting of – a beautiful young woman, a geek and a stud. Hence Peter Paul and Mary
(though from the clips above, I’m not certain which of Peter or Paul was the geek or the stud – as indeed, I am uncertain just which one IS Peter or Paul).
All this isn’t to take away from their music, which I love dearly.
As a footnote, there’s something curious about `I Love Rock’n’Roll’, which is that its very behind the times.
The clip above is dated 1968, but I believe IDRRM was released in 1967.
Sure, in 1964 or even ’65, one could plausibly put down the seriousness of the lyrics of rock music – `If the words don’t get in the way…’
But in 1968? Or even ’67, when the Beatles reprinted (for the first time ever on an LP, I believe) all the lyrics to their Sgt. Pepper album on the back cover?
By ’67, Dylan had `gone electric’ long before…
I’m sorry, I can’t bring myself to be charmed by the “Republican” joke. Is there NO subject these people won’t politicize? Yes, Mary Travers had a pretty singing voice — but, even when prettily expressed, political hatred is still ugly.
What bothers me more than the fact that Travers made the joke at all is that she shared it with her donor without bothering to find out the donor’s politics first. You know why this happened. Travers knew this donor to be an extraordinarily good and generous person and very likely discovered as they talked that she was well-spoken and intelligent, too. Ergo, in her narrow, smug, pinched little brain, the donor was clearly a liberal — because of course, ALL good and generous and well-spoken people are liberals. That goes without saying. Of course it isn’t necessary to inquire before sharing this marvelous little hate-based joke that she, being so goodhearted and all, will think is SO funny!
Bah. Yes, I guess you could say that Travers learned from the experience in that she told the story later as a joke on herself — but just how much did she learn? Even as she joked, she still seemed to think of conservatism as some sort of genetic defect that, once introduced into her body, threatened everything she was.
What’s left out of this story is what it must have felt like to be Mary DeWitt Hessen and to be gratuitously and unexpectedly insulted by the person whose life she had just saved. She seems to have handled it with grace and class, which doesn’t surprise me at all.
Call me a Pollyanna, but I could have done with the last picture.
Mary, Janis, Gracie, Michelle, Janis – they’re all there, forever young.
Puff was the first song I learned on guitar. I was crushed when I found out what it was about. Those dragons are tetchy beings.
Glennie,
PP&M may have been artificial, but they were well put together as a group and got suitable material. It was a good construction job.
One of the Ps got nailed for statutory rape, back in the day. Who’d a thunk PP&M had underage groupies?
Of the old folk groups who got political, I regret PP&M did, because I really liked most of their stuff and wished that I could listen to it without the baggage.
Still, there is the faux authenticity, lampooned by Tom Lehrer, still available on public radio, Folk Sampler and one other. Good voice. Hit the notes. Rhyme. FAKE. SELL OUT. COMMERCIAL. Not so with the authentic groups.
In one of my last emails to my church’s email list after a glorious multiple-post cluster-hate of “Why I Can’t Forgive George Bush”, I told them, “I am George Bush.”
Oh, snap!
I assume they’re Christian of some sort or other? have you asked any of these “I can’t forgive Bush” folks how they expect to receive forgivness themselves? and how their declaration squares with the call to forgive not 7 times, but 7 times 70?
I see that Richard Aubrey has beaten me to the Tom Lehrer reference. I typed this up before I read his comment, but will post it anyway.
Not all readers may have caught AVI’s reference to the folk song army. The first time I heard of it was in Tom Lehrer’s Folk Song Army from 1965. I didn’t like the song at first, then being an undrafted member of the FSA, but it grew on me.
It is noteworthy how topical Tom Lehrer’s songs are today, even though they were written a half century ago . That his current politics are not mine is but a blip on the radar screen. He had a wit, and wasn’t bad on the music side, either. His Clementine, where he imitates various compsers, is a masterpiece. Gilbert and Sullivan rolled into one, but only for a few songs. But what songs they were!
The first verse perfectly captures liberals and “activists” even today.
Richard Aubrey –
*All this isn’t to take away from their music, which I love dearly.*
I put no stock whatsoever in terms like `authentic’ and `artificial.’
The Beatles were working class punks who, courtesy suits and ties, appeared to be `nice young boys’. It was a pose, a show.
The Rolling Stones, the `bad boys’ of the Brit Invasion, were all bourgeois poseurs (Jagger a former student at LSE). Again, just a passing show…
I love both the Beatles and the Stones…
Glennie. I liked the earliest Beatles because you could jump around to them at parties. When they started to show smart, they got ‘way boring.
The Stones annoyed the hell out of me until I quit worrying.
Yeah, “authentic” and “artificial” are in-group tools of competition. Sort of like you have to be a masochist to listen to the authentic stuff, but it’s your duty.
PP&M, The Kingston Trio, Brothers Four, they all shared one thing. If they had good material, they could make it sound good. It was good to listen to.
No cracked-voice half notes or nasal whining.
On Pandora, I currently have choices which include Purcell, Tallis, Greensleeves, Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis, Trumpet Voluntary, Fantasia on Greensleeves, Aranjuez, Deprez, and sacred harp singing–only two show up, last I tried.
Never liked r&r much if at all.
Saw a video of a live performance of the Mamas and The Papas doing “Monday, Monday”. I used to think that was pretty okay, listening to it in college. But they must have engineered the hell out of it. Live, there were so many false notes it hurt to listen, and one of the guys was wearing a hat made out of old carpet or something. Jeez, what fakes.
Richard –
*PP&M, The Kingston Trio, Brothers Four, they all shared one thing. If they had good material, they could make it sound good. It was good to listen to.*
The Kingston Trio, I love too, especially the album `At Large’. Not familiar with the Brothers four, I’m sure they are pretty good too.
I will have to depart from you about rock music, though, the Beatles are my favourite group, the Rolling Stones are close behind.
Considering the songs on K Trio’s `At Large’, and much of the folk-revival material generally, I would say that any `roots’ musician who played many of these songs at a folk festival today, would be able to sing no more than a verse before getting booed from the stage (as Zimmerman was in 1965, when he `went electric’).
I mean, `Remember the Alamo’ for heaven’s sake, which actually *celebrates* the last stand of David Crockett and the others at that strategically worthless fort, against the Mexicans.
Not a Kingston Trio song that I know of, but `down by the banks of the Ohio’ (aka `Willie Oh Willie’) narrates the tale of a spurned suitor who murders his intended… celebrating violence against women, no less. boo! boo! boo! boo!
Or `Rum by Gum’, covered by many artists but the one I’m aware of most is the Chad Mitchell Triom, which excoriates those `on the side of Temperance/We do Stand’: `We never eat cookies because they have yeast/One Little bite turns a man to a beast’ and `We don’t use tobacco because we do think/That the people who use it are likely to drink.’
Today, not only are alcohol and tobacco leftist bette noir (bette noires?) but so are fat-inducing foods such as cookies (not to mention the use of the term `fruitcake’ in that song, which no one eats any longer and which is now a derogatory term for male homosexual). boo! boo! boo! boo!
Nolanimrod, not to worry. Puff wasn’t about marijuana. That was an urban legend that sprung up later.
Yes, Yarrow was convicted and did time for sexual contact with a 14 y/o girl in 1970, when he was 32.
Dylan was not booed from the stage at Newport for going electric, nor did Pete Seeger try to cut his wires, BTW. The stories are easily believed because of the strong “more authentic than thou” attitude among folkies of the time – which was true. But they didn’t happen.
As for authenticity, Ramblin Jack Elliot was born Elliot Adnopoz in Brooklyn, and John Denver was an Air Force brat from Roswell named Henry Deutschendorf. No harm in that, I suppose. America is the land when you can remake yourself if you choose, and both of them did.
You guys have got to see “A Mighty Wind,” I’m tellin’ ya. Captures the aging folkies perfectly.
Glennie,
To change the direction: The Alamo tied up the Mexican army for a valuable period. That it would serve as a rallying cry later on was unknowable. But “Remember Goliad” was just as good.
Tie up, tie down, shoot up the Mexican army to give the rest of the Texicans time to rally and organize.
As Turenne said, more or less, the human heart is the starting point in all matters pertaining to war. Napoleon said in war the moral is to the material as three to one.
Eventually, remembering the Alamo–or Goliad–gave the Texicans some heart.
I happened to go to a fraternity reunion about ten years ago, and on the way home heard a station playing the oldies from that exact period. I was struck by the comfortable memories those execrable examples of “music” brought forth.
*To change the direction: The Alamo tied up the Mexican army for a valuable period. That it would serve as a rallying cry later on was unknowable. But “Remember Goliad” was just as good*
If I’m incorrect, I stand corrected.
For the record, I’m not putting down the Texicans, who fought bravely to the end.
Assistant village idiot –
Assistant Village Idiot Says:
September 18th, 2009 at 1:07 pm
Nolanimrod, not to worry. Puff wasn’t about marijuana. That was an urban legend that sprung up later.
Yes, Yarrow was convicted and did time for sexual contact with a 14 y/o girl in 1970, when he was 32.
*Dylan was not booed from the stage at Newport for going electric, nor did Pete Seeger try to cut his wires, BTW.*
Oh yes he was. I’ve heard the recording. As for Seeger cutting his wires, I’ve never heard that. But, he was booed.
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R.B. Glennie: That “Rum, By Gum” song mocked the temperance movement, however.
AVI- as usually, you’re absolutely right.. this time about self-righteousness being central to the culture. Let’s hear it for smugness. That being said, PPM’s music was authentic- they weren’t the Monkees. Their vocal richness still makes me smile, probably because I can’t figure out how Mary hears (much less sings) those intricate harmonies.
And John Mellancamp was born John Cougar before he… never mind.
Gringo: Here’s a previous post I wrote on Tom Lehrer.
just for the record, I like the Monkees as well –
`Last Train to Clarksville’, `I’m a Believer’ and so on.
Michael Nesmith went on to become a respected country-rock musician (not a very succesful one, mind, but I like his solo albums).
PPM *were* the Monkees in so far as they were, essentially, hired guns of Albert Grossman.
My point was that, even still, they made great music.
neo-neo con –
my point about `Rum by Gum’ is that modern leftists have basically the same puritanical attitudes as those involved in the Temperance (also, people today often mistake the Temperance movement as a `conservative’ movement, when in fact it was supported by many `progressives’ and was part and parcel of the `first-wave’ feminist movement).
kreiz Says:
And John Mellancamp was born John Cougar before he… never mind.
Actually, on that note…
Anyone here been into any of the ’80s folkies, from the late ’80s folk revival?
Tracy Chapman? Indigo Girls? Suzanne Vega? Michelle Shocked? The Washington Squares?
The Indigo Girls were the melodic type, like Simon and Garfunkel. Chapman was a little more “serious” and “political” in the Dylanesque sense. Michelle Shocked made albums recorded outdoors with her small tape recorder and her acustic guitar beside a campfire, and featured a cover of her getting arrested in a protest. And the Washington Squares are the late ’80s equivalent of the contrived but talented PP&M and Kingston Trio.
I listened to these, alongside the fave of us late ’80s “idealistic youth,” . . . . U-2.
Of course, quirky as I am, I remember listening to Traci Chapman (one of her songs was “Talkin about a Revolution”) on the TV during a gathering of youthful Republicans.
Let me clarify my last post.
I listened to Traci Chapman on the TV while I attended a gathering at someone’s house of youthful Repiublicans preparing for the 1988 Bush-Quayle campaign.
Folkies on the TV and Dukakis jokes in the living room… it just doesnt get any better than that.
R. B. Glennie: Good point. Prohibition was indeed a progressive movement, although I recall that its support also included conservatives of certain religious groups that were against drinking.
I’m a total sucker for the Indigo Girls… another politically-charged bunch. Nothing better than a guitar, tight harmonies and lefty sentiments… I have to admit it.
And I’m seeing U 2 next month- St. Bono et al. Can’t wait.
AVI, it’s like you and I have one mind between us.
R.B. Glennie Says:
September 18th, 2009 at 1:15 pm
I’ve heard it too. There was some booing going on, but there were probably several reasons for it. Based on what I’ve read:
1. Some people didn’t like the electric music.
2. The sound system was horrible; distorted and painfully loud.
3. He only played three songs and left the stage. (Those were all the songs he and the band had rehearsed.)
To clarify my point 3: He wasn’t booed off the stage; it was more like “That’s IT? Three songs? WTF?”
What makes Mary so appealing is that she’s not holding anything back. I’m relying on memory here, but I recall Ron Radosh says Mary was that way in high school, too.
Oblio.
Seems to me that most people should hold a lot back.
As somebody said, “Let it all hang out? We spent ten thousand years getting it tucked in.”
Oblio:
AVI, it’s like you and I have one mind between us.
I hope that makes neither of you half wits.
🙂
> On another sad note, Henry Gibson died yesterday. he will forever be associated with “Laugh In”. When I got my first job, I quickly learned I had to watch Laugh In because that is the only thing my customers would talk about the next day.
Talk about utterly topical humor. I saw it in syndication in the early 80s, gawd it was totally humorless.
Yet when I was young it was spectacularly funny, and I don’t think it was only because of my youthful lack of discrimination.
> But, outside, cities were burning, there were riots, the old order was upside down and nobody knew what was going on, there were assassinations, two or three hundred guys a week were dying in Viet Nam.
The cause of all that was the 1964 Dem national convention:
Democratic Debacle
http://www.americanheritage.com/articles/magazine/ah/2004/3/2004_3_59.shtml
When blacks realized that the Dems didn’t give a rat’s ass about them, they sorta decided to get (rightfully) pissed. Somehow, they still bought into the idea that the GOP wasn’t any better.
> What’s left out of this story is what it must have felt like to be Mary DeWitt Hessen and to be gratuitously and unexpectedly insulted by the person whose life she had just saved. She seems to have handled it with grace and class, which doesn’t surprise me at all.
I tend to concur with your analysis. Typical libtard arrogance, met with true Xtian charity, mind you — not even the *expectation* of appreciation.
You do it because it’s *right*, not because you’re looking to be rewarded — even with a nod of appreciation. Matthew 6:1+
Richard Aubrey, you are right, but holding nothing back makes one a good performer in the live arts. Please don’t try it at home.
> I love both the Beatles and the Stones…
You confuse “image” with “artificial”
The Beatles and the Stones both had images to present to their public. Certainly these images were created by the record companies, managers, and PR execs, and did not reflect the individuals involved.
In no sense, though, were they “a manufactured creation” such as PP&M or The Monkees.
And I say that as a major fan of The Monkees (Boyce and Hart are a sadly forgotten, greatly talented pair of creators) since I was but a lad and got a double “best of” LP, “A Barrel Full of Monkees” — and I don’t think PP&M were shabby, either.
I’m just not AS impressed by any group who can’t create any successful music of their own (and, excluding Michael Nesmith, that largely describes The Monkees), but do mostly covers written by others, even though they do them remarkably well.
> The Indigo Girls were the melodic type,
I have a friend who is a huuuge fan of the Indigo Girls. His take is that, if you understand playing the guitar, those girls are the equal of just about any of Rock’s “guitar legends” like Clapton, Beck, or Fripp. They do some majorly impressive stuff.
I can’t gauge that from an understanding-skill perspective, but it does sound pretty impressive.
> Richard Aubrey, you are right, but holding nothing back makes one a good performer in the live arts. Please don’t try it at home.
What, like this?
:oD
.
Or, for us guys…
:oD
.
OBloodyhell: Peter Tork is a Monkee who is also a competent musician.
http://www.petertork.com/
http://www.shoesuedeblues.com/
*[does anyone like] Tracy Chapman? Indigo Girls? Suzanne Vega? Michelle Shocked? The Washington Squares?*
I love Michelle Shocked – or at least her album `Short Sharp Shocked’. Tons of great music there; I like Suzanne Vega too (or at least `Solitude Standing’). Tracy Chapman, except for `Fast Car’ and the Indigos I frankly never liked for some reason.
But none of these neo-folkies would ever go near the actual traditional folk songs played by Kingston Trio, etc., as these are too `politically incorrect.’
As for Dylan at Newport, I have to disagree with the poster `rickl’ above.
It was unambiguous, the recording I heard: he was being booed.
just noticed –
*I’m just not AS impressed by any group who can’t create any successful music of their own (and, excluding Michael Nesmith, that largely describes The Monkees), but do mostly covers written by others, even though they do them remarkably well.*
This would describe perhaps the bulk of successful performers over the last fifty years: Sinatra, Janis Joplin, Elvis, many others.
the fact that the Monkees and PPM were, in essence, hired guns of someone else does not preclude liking their music.
OBloodyhell, I was surprised at how restrained those performance were. Who would have ever thought that I would find Heidi Klum less appealing that Mary Travers? I’m stunned.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_Dylan_controversy
Apparently the issue is more in doubt than I knew. There was booing, but all parties involved seem to have a different explanation as to why. I retract my statement that it was an urban legend. What is clear after listening to the tape and reading the comments of the folks who were there is that nothing is clear.
AVI:
Good link. I haven’t seen that before. It sort of backs up what I said earlier.
Yes, there was booing at Newport, but it is the notion that “he was booed off the stage” that is the urban legend. So in that sense there is no need for you to retract your earlier statement.
we hebben niet met 1-6 maar met 1-8 veeolrrnen dat pakken we hun dan terug, als wuij dan weer tegen hun moeten spellenwij uit tegen hun thuis. Daar kunnen wij er op gaan vertrouwen op dat momment,dat zou gert en lia ook zeggen gr van stefan