Almanac Music: Vale Peter Yarrow


Image: Wikipedia

 

Peter Yarrow of the 1960s folk trio Peter, Paul and Mary has died at the age of 86. Those of us of a certain age will remember their distinctive sound built around the contralto voice of Mary Travers. Yarrow’s most distinctive contribution to their discography was his children’s ballad Puff the Magic Dragon.

 

 

 

 

The group’s run of hits reached its peak with their biggest single in 1969, John Denver’s Leaving on a Jet Plane, but they broke up only a year later. Reunions followed in later years but they never regained their former prominence. This was due, at least in part, to Yarrow’s conviction in 1970 for taking ‘improper liberties’ with a 14-year-old girl.

 

Yarrow was also a political activist throughout his adult life.

 

 

Image: Wikipedia

 

Mary Travers died from leukaemia in 2009. Noel Paul Stookey, age 87, is the only surviving member of the trio.

 

To read more about Peter Yarrow click here.

 

To read a tribute to Peter Yarrow from The Guardian click here.

 

 

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Comments

  1. Matt Gately says

    Thanks, I hadn’t known that Yarrow was a convicted child rapist.

    That news made me dig around a bit. (Well, I found this story by the Washington Post https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2021/05/17/peter-yarrow-carter-pardon-assault/). Turns out he pleaded guilty to taking “immoral and improper liberties” with a child in August 1969. He was sentenced in September 1970 to one to three years’ prison but had all but three months of that time suspended. Well, nearly three months; he was released from the clink three days early in time for Thanksgiving.

    This digging revealed that Yarrow’s gentle treatment by the state went on and on right to the top. Amazingly, his record wiped clean by sainted Jimmy Carter in one of his very last acts. Motivated by charity and mercy, no doubt. Still, according to the Washington Post, it was likely the only instance of a sex offender ever receiving a presidential pardon.

    Yarrow served three months in the clink for raping a kid and for decades served his own image. He was a prominent activist until the MeToo movement finally shamed people into looking askance at his sorry record, not to mention his records. He was finally cancelled.

    Yarrow long claimed that his song Puff was about the child’s loss of innocence. I always thought it was creepy (not to say utterly twee like the rest of Peter, Paul and Mary’s stuff, even their name). Turns out it truly was.

  2. Colin Ritchie says

    Just love ‘Puff … ‘ and Peter, Paul and Mary, part of the soundtrack of my younger days, and for that matter, still part of my soundtrack today.

  3. Ian Hauser says

    Matt, for the sake of accuracy, ‘Puff’ pre-dated Yarrow’s legal problems by about 6 years. It might be a bit of a long bow to conflate the two so casually. PP&M may not be to your taste but their significance as artists in their own right as well as being interpreters of Pete Seeger and Bob Dylan (among others) needs to be recognised.

    As for issues of ultimate justice, judgement, mercy, redemption and grace, I’m content to defer to powers well above my station in life.

  4. Matt Gately says

    Yes, quite true, Puff was made well before Yarrow’s conviction for child rape. Yes, hie wrote his ode to the innocence of children well before his conviction for having violated a child.

    And yes, issues of justice and so on certainly have a spiritual, even transcendent element to them far beyond mortal ken but I was more thinking about the gall and chutzpah of a common criminal posing as a moral exemplar.

    There’s no denying that PPM were highly popular, especially when covering acts with a far harder edge such as Dylan or Seeger. They were also technically gifted musicians. But by other lights, they weren’t great interpreters of a movement for change, but homogenisers turning radical ideas bland and safe for consumption.

  5. Hi, just to be clear, Yarrow didn’t write the lyrics to Puff. The poem by Lenny Lipton obviously meant something to him, as the poem’s universal themes relate to so many of us. But Lenny’s “voice” drives the metaphoric (and psychological) tale of wanderlust and growing up.

    PP&M were maybe of second or probably third tier significance re the 60s. Yarrow’s contribution for decades after that, to social and political issues, was more than notable.

    There is a bit of right time, right place to PP&Ms place in 60s cultural moments. They were after all a manufactured group, not unlike The Monkees (and The Pistols). They did achieve success, Puff and Jet Plane being the big examples as was performing at MLKs March on Washington.

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