SING ALONG SUNDAY:
"Blowin' in the Wind"
in memory of Mary Travers
Early Years (1961-1969) The group was created and managed by Albert Grossman, who sought to create a folk "supergroup" by bringing together "a tall blonde (Mary Travers), a funny guy (Paul Stookey), and a good-looking guy (Peter Yarrow)"[citation needed]. He launched the group in 1961, booking them into The Bitter End, a coffee house and popular folk venue in New York City's Greenwich Village. They recorded their first album, Peter, Paul and Mary, the following year. It included "500 Miles", "Lemon Tree", and the Pete Seeger hit tunes "If I Had a Hammer" (subtitled "(The Hammer Song)") and "Where Have All the Flowers Gone?". The album was listed in the Billboard Magazine Top Ten for 10 months, including 7 weeks in the #1 position. It remained a main catalog seller for decades to come, eventually sold over two million copies - earning Double Platinum certification from the RIAA - in the United States alone.
The group made its television debut in either 1961 or 1962 on the PM East/PM West talk show hosted by Mike Wallace and Joyce Davidson, though neither audio nor video footage has yet been found[citation needed]. By 1963, Peter, Paul and Mary had recorded three albums. All three were in the Top ten the week of President Kennedy's assassination.
In 1963 the group also released "Puff the Magic Dragon", which Yarrow and fellow Cornell student Leonard Lipton had written in 1959. Despite urban myths that insist the song is filled with drugs references, it was actually inspired by a poem by Lenny Lipton about the lost innocence of childhood[citation needed].
That year the group performed "If I Had a Hammer" at the 1963 March on Washington, best remembered for Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech. One of their biggest hit singles was the Bob Dylan song "Blowin' in the Wind. They also sang other Bob Dylan songs, such as: "The Times They Are a-Changin'";Don't Think Twice, it's Alright; and "When the Ship Comes In". Their manager, Albert Grossman, was also Dylan's manager. Their recordings of Dylan's songs helped people appreciate his music who had hitherto been put off by his nasal whine. Their success with Dylan's Don't Think Twice Its Alright aided Dylan's Freewheelin' album into the Top 30. (It had been released four months earlier.) [1]
"Leaving On A Jet Plane" became their only #1 hit (as well as their final Top 40 Pop hit) in December 1969, and was written by John Denver. It was the group's only million-selling Gold single. The track first appeared on their Album 1700 in 1967 (which also contained their #9 hit I Dig Rock and Roll Music). "Day Is Done", a #21 hit in June 1969, was the last Hot 100 hit that the trio recorded.
Mary Allin Travers (November 9, 1936 – September 16, 2009) was an American
singer-songwriter and member of the
folk group
Peter, Paul and Mary, along with
Peter Yarrow and
Noel "Paul" Stookey. Peter, Paul and Mary was one of the most successful folk-singing groups of the 1960s.
[2] Unlike most folk musicians who were a part of the early 1960s Greenwich Village music scene, Travers actually grew up in that New York neighborhood.
[2]
While in high school, she joined The Song Swappers, which sang backup for Pete Seeger when Folkways Records reissued a union song collection, Talking Union, in 1955. The Song Swappers recorded a total of four albums for Folkways in 1955, all with Seeger. Travers regarded her singing as a hobby and was shy about it, but was encouraged by fellow musicians.[2] Travers also was in the cast of the Broadway-theatre show, The Next President.[4]
The group Peter, Paul and Mary was formed in 1961, and they were an immediate success. They shared a manager, Albert Grossman, with Bob Dylan. Their success with Dylan's "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right" helped propel Dylan's Freewheelin' album into the Top 30 four months after its release.[5]
An Associated press obituary noted:[6]
The group's first album, Peter, Paul and Mary came out in 1962 and immediately scored hits with their versions of "If I Had a Hammer" and "Lemon Tree". The former won them Grammys for best folk recording and best performance by a vocal group.
Their next album, Moving, included the hit tale of innocence lost, "Puff (The Magic Dragon)", which reached No. 2 on the charts and generated since-discounted reports that it was an ode to marijuana.
The trio's third album, In the Wind, featured three songs by the 22-year-old Bob Dylan. "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right" and "Blowin' in the Wind" reached the top 10, bringing Dylan's material to a massive audience; the latter shipped 300,000 copies during one two-week period.
...at one point in 1963, three of their albums were in the top six Billboard best-selling LPs as they became the biggest stars of the folk revival movement.
Their version of "If I Had a Hammer" became an anthem for racial equality, as did Bob Dylan's "Blowin' in the Wind", which they performed at the August 1963 March on Washington.[6] "Puff, the Magic Dragon" is so well-known that it has entered American and British pop culture.
The group broke up in 1970, and Travers subsequently pursued a solo career and recorded five albums: Mary (1971), Morning Glory (1972), All My Choices (1973), Circles (1974) and It's in Everyone of Us(1978).[2] The group re-formed in 1978, toured extensively and issued many new albums. The group was inducted into the Vocal Group Hall of Fame in 1999.
[edit] Personal life
Travers's first three marriages ended in divorce.[7] She is survived by her fourth husband, restaurateur Ethan Robbins (married 1991); two daughters, Erika Marshall (born 1960) of Naples, Florida, and Alicia Travers (born 1965) of Greenwich, Connecticut; half-brother John Travers; a sister, Ann Gordon, Ph.D. of Oakland, California; and two grandchildren. Travers lived in Redding, Connecticut.[2] [8]
In 2005, Travers was diagnosed with leukemia. Although a bone-marrow transplant apparently slowed the progression of the disease, Travers died on September 16, 2009, at Danbury Hospital in Danbury, Connecticut, from complications arising from chemotherapy.[2] She was 72 years old.
Source:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Travers_(singer)
Blowin' in the Wind
Blowin' in the Wind" is a song written by Bob Dylan and released on his 1963 album The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan. Although it has been described as a protest song, it poses a series of rhetorical questions about peace, war, and freedom. The refrain "The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind" has been described as "impenetrably ambiguous: either the answer is so obvious it is right in your face, or the answer is as intangible as the wind".[1]
In 1999, the song was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame. In 2004, it was ranked #14 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the "500 Greatest Songs of All Time".
In 2009, the song was licensed for commercial use when The Co-operative Group used it as the soundtrack to a £10 million brand re-launch.[2]
"Blowin' in the Wind" has been described as an anthem of the 1960s civil rights movement.[8] In Martin Scorsese's documentary on Dylan, No Direction Home, Mavis Staples expressed her astonishment on first hearing the song, and said she could not understand how a young white man could write something which captured the frustration and aspirations of black people so powerfully.
Sam Cooke was also deeply impressed by the song and began to perform it in his live act. A version was included on Cooke's 1964 album Live At the Copacabana. He later wrote the response "A Change Is Gonna Come", which he recorded on January 24, 1964.[9]
"Blowin' in the Wind" became world famous when it was recorded by Peter, Paul and Mary, who were also represented by Dylan's manager, Albert Grossman. The single sold a phenomenal three hundred thousand copies in the first week of release. On July 13, 1963, it reached number two on the Billboard pop chart, with sales exceeding one million copies. Peter Yarrow recalled that, when he told Dylan he would make more than $5,000 from the publishing rights, Dylan was speechless.[10] Peter, Paul & Mary's version of the song also spent five weeks atop the easy listening chart.
- The song became one of the most popular anti-war songs during the 1960s and the Vietnam War. During the Iraq War protests, commentators noted that protesters were resurrecting songs such as "Blowin' in the Wind" rather than creating new ones.[14]
- The song has been embraced by many liberal churches, and in the 1960s and 1970s it was sung both in Catholic church "folk masses" and as a hymn in Protestant ones. In 1997, Bob Dylan performed three other songs at a Catholic church congress. Pope John Paul II, who was in attendance, told the crowd of some 300,000 young Italian Catholics that the answer was indeed "in the wind" – not in the wind that blew things away, but rather "in the wind of the spirit" that would lead them to Christ. In 2007, Pope Benedict XVI (who had also been in attendance) wrote that he was uncomfortable with music stars such as Dylan performing in a church environment.[15]
Cover versions
"Blowin' in the Wind" has been covered by hundreds of artists. The most commercially successful version is by folk music trio Peter, Paul and Mary, who released the song in June 1963, three weeks after The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan was issued. The trio's version, which was used as the title track of their third album, peaked at #2 on the Billboard charts.[18]
- Other covers have been by The Hollies, country guitar virtuoso Chet Atkins, Dolly Parton, folk chanteuse Judy Collins, Marianne Faithfull (1964 single), The Seekers, soul singer Sam Cooke, blues belter Etta James, Duke Ellington, Neil Young (with air raid sound effects), the Doodletown Pipers, Marlene Dietrich, Bobby Darin, Bruce Springsteen, Elvis Presley, Stevie Wonder (whose version became a top 10 hit on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1966), John Fogerty, The Hooters on their 1994 album The Hooters Live, Me First and the Gimme Gimmes, and was performed by Jenny in the award-winning movie Forrest Gump (sung by Joan Baez), and was lampooned in Me, Myself And Irene. The Me First and the Gimme Gimmes' version appears on their album "Blow in the Wind", a play on the title of the song.
- In 2005 Dolly Parton recorded the song with the bluegrass trio Nickel Creek. (Parton subsequently stated in a CNN interview that she'd initially tried to get Dylan himself to appear on her recording of the song, but that Dylan turned her down. [1])
- A traveling exhibition called Bob Dylan's American Journey, 1956–1966 which was featured at the Experience Music Project in Seattle contains an audio display with samples of dozens of different cover versions of the song, sung in numerous languages and from a variety of musical genres.
- The song has also been sung and recorded in German by Marlene Dietrich as "Die Antwort weiss ganz allein der Wind".
- In Bengali there has been a translation of the song recorded by popular Bengali blues singer Suman Chatterjee. It goes "Kotota Path" ("How Many Roads") in Bengali.
- The Italian version was written by Giulio Rapetti (better known as Mogol) and sung by Luigi Tenco with the title "La risposta (è caduta nel vento)" ("The answer (has fallen down the wind)").
- Hugues Aufray sang a French version, entitled "Dans le souffle du vent" ("In the blow of the wind"). Aufray has been known to adapt various international artist's songs to French, including several from Dylan's repertoire.
Source:
The Lyrics
Blowin' in the Wind
How many roads must a man walk down
Before you call him a man?
Yes, 'n' how many seas must a white dove sail
Before she sleeps in the sand?
Yes, 'n' how many times must the cannon balls fly
Before they're forever banned?
The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind,
The answer is blowin' in the wind.
How many times must a man look up
Before he can see the sky?
Yes, 'n' how many ears must one man have
Before he can hear people cry?
Yes, 'n' how many deaths will it take till he knows
That too many people have died?
The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind,
The answer is blowin' in the wind.
How many years can a mountain exist
Before it's washed to the sea?
Yes, 'n' how many years can some people exist
Before they're allowed to be free?
Yes, 'n' how many times can a man turn his head,
Pretending he just doesn't see?
The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind,
The answer is blowin' in the wind.
Click These Links and Sing Along:
Peter Paul & Mary - Blowin in the wind (Tonight In Person 1966)
Blowin In The Wind in concert
Bob Dylan Blowin' In the Wind 1963
Bonus Song
Mary Travers - And When I Die with Mama Cass Eliot 1969
--
Together, we can change the world, one mind at a time.
Have a great day,
Tommy
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