Still popular as adult contemporary music of the 60s, Peter Paul and Mary songs are part of our lives. From spiritual songs like A Soalin, All My Trials, We Shall Overcome, I Shall Be Released, Where Have All the Flowers Gone; humorous songs like San Francisco Bay Blues; to political songs like If I Had a Hammer and This Land is Your Land; love songs such as Kisses Sweeter than Wine; and personal songs such as Early Morning Rain, and Puff the Magic Dragon, many made the Billboard charts, and have been rediscovered by Shout Factory. The music of Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie, and the Baby Boomers lives on!
The tradition of giving soul cakes was celebrated in Britain or Ireland during the Middle Ages, although similar practices for the souls of the dead were found as far south as Italy. The cakes were usually filled with allspice, nutmeg, cinnamon, ginger or other sweet spices, raisins or currants, and before baking were topped with the mark of a cross to signify that these were alms. They were traditionally set out with glasses of wine on All Hallows’ Eve as an offering for the dead, and on All Saints’ Day and All Souls’ Day children would go “souling”, or ritually begging for cakes door to door.
The “In Concert” set, which was released on July 24 (the second day of the 1964 Newport Folk Festival, gave a good idea of the on-stage abilities of an act that had become a worldwide success. A trade ad for the album noted that, since forming, the trio had played over 400 concerts to more than two million people. (Shortly after the LP’s release, they embarked on a nine day tour of Japan.) More than half of the 19 selections had not appeared previously on a Peter, Paul and Mary album. And the nearly 82-minute running time allowed space for the whole range of the group’s talents, from its mastery of traditional and thoughtful new material to Stookey’s previously unrecorded comic sensibility. “I think that the In Concert album in it’s own way had something very, very special,” said Yarrow. “There was a sense of really being there at the concert, and there really was a sense of capitulation of the flow of the concert. It had a point of view. It had a consistency in sound terms.”
Peter, Paul and Mary was an American folk group formed in New York City in 1961, during the American folk music revival phenomenon. The trio was composed of tenor Peter Yarrow, baritone Noel Paul Stookey and contralto Mary Travers. The group’s repertoire included songs written by Yarrow and Stookey, early songs by Bob Dylan as well as covers of other folk musicians. After the death of Travers in 2009, Yarrow and Stookey continued to perform as a duo under their individual names.
Mary Travers said she was influenced by Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, and the Weavers. In the documentary Peter, Paul & Mary: Carry It On — A Musical Legacy members of the Weavers discuss how Peter, Paul and Mary took over the torch of the social commentary of folk music in the 1960s.
The group was inducted into the Vocal Group Hall of Fame in 1999. Peter, Paul and Mary received the Sammy Cahn Lifetime Achievement Award from the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2006.
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