“Peter, Paul and Mary are folk singers.” So stated
the liner notes to the group’s self-titled 1962 debut album. Today,
this declaration seems redundant, because the term “folk music” has
come to be virtually interchangeable with the group name, but when the
words were written, they were meant less as a stylistic distinction than
as a mission statement.
In the decades prior to the ‘60s, through the
work of such avatars as Woody Guthrie, the Weavers and Pete Seeger, folk
music had become identified with sociopolitical commentary, but the
idiom had been forced underground in the Senator Joe McCarthy
witch-hunting era of the late ‘50s. By the time Peter, Paul and Mary
arrived on the scene, for the majority of America, folk was viewed
merely as a side-bar to pop music which employed acoustic instruments.
At this critical historic juncture, with the nation still recovering
from the McCarthy era, the Civil Rights Movement taking shape, the Cold
War heating up and a nascent spirit of activism in the air, Peter
Yarrow, Noel (Paul) Stookey and Mary Travers came together to juxtapose
these cross currents and thus to reclaim folk’s potency as a social,
cultural and political force. But few at the time could have realized
how fervently and pervasively the group’s message of humanity, hope
and activism would be embraced. (full
biography)