As The New York Times critic Robert Shelton put it not long afterward, “Sex appeal as a keystone for a folk-song group was the idea of the group’s manager … who searched for months for ‘the girl’ until he decided on Miss Travers.” Their beatnik look – a tall blonde flanked by a pair of goateed guitarists – was a part of their initial appeal. The budding trio, boosted by the arrangements of Milt Okun, spent seven months rehearsing in her Greenwich Village apartment before their 1961 public debut at the Bitter End. In the book “Positively 4th Street” by David Hajdu, Travers recalled that Grossman’s strategy was to “find a nobody that he could nurture and make famous.” Grossman, who later worked in the same capacity for Bob Dylan. It wasn’t until she met up with Yarrow and Stookey that Travers would taste success on her own.
She also appeared (as one of a group of folk singers) in a short-lived 1958 Broadway show called “The Next President,” starring comedian Mort Sahl. With a group called the Song Swappers, Travers backed Seeger on one album and two shows at Carnegie Hall. She quickly became enamored with folk performers like the Weavers and was soon performing with Pete Seeger, a founding member of the Weavers who lived in the same building as the Travers family. 9, 1936, in Louisville, Ky., the daughter of journalists who moved the family to Manhattan’s bohemian Greenwich Village.
“I am deadened and heartsick beyond words to consider a life without Mary Travers and honored beyond my wildest dreams to have shared her spirit and her career,” he said. Noel “Paul” Stookey, the trio’s other member, praised Travers for her inspiring activism, “especially in her defense of the defenseless.” “That’s the way she sang, too – honestly and with complete authenticity.” “It was, as Mary always was, honest and completely authentic,” he said. The band’s publicist, Heather Lylis, said Travers died Wednesday at Danbury Hospital in Connecticut.īandmate Peter Yarrow said that in her final months, Travers handled her declining health with bravery and generosity, showing her love to friends and family “with great dignity and without restraint.” BOSTON – Mary Travers, one part of the folk trio Peter, Paul, and Mary, who used beautiful, tranquil harmonies to convey the angst and turmoil of the Vietnam antiwar movement, racial discrimination and more, died after a yearslong battle with leukemia.
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