By Associated Press’s John Rogers
Los Angeles (AP) Singer-songwriter Peter Yarrow has away. He was best known as one-third of the folk-music trio Peter, Paul, and Mary, whose passionate harmonies enthralled millions as they raised their voices against war and in support of civil rights. He was eighty-six.
According to publicist Ken Sunshine, Yarrow, who also co-wrote the group’s most enduring hit, Puff the Magic Dragon, passed away in New York on Tuesday. For four years, Yarrow had been fighting bladder cancer.
Yarrow, Noel Paul Stookey, and Mary Travers had an amazing period of success in the 1960s, releasing two No. 1 albums, six Billboard Top 10 singles, and five Grammys.
As they spearheaded an American folk music revival, they also introduced Bob Dylan to the world early on by transforming two of his songs, Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right, and Blowin’ in the Wind, into Billboard Top 10 singles. At the 1963 March on Washington, where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. gave his well-known I Have a Dream speech, they sang Blowin’ in the Wind.
The trio got back together in 1978 for a Survival Sunday, an anti-nuclear-power concert that Yarrow had planned in Los Angeles, following an eight-year break to pursue solo careers. They would stay together until 2009, when Travers passed away. Both Yarrow and Stookey continued to perform together and separately after her death.
The obituary’s primary author, Rogers, left The Associated Press in 2021.
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