Peter, Paul and Mary – Albums Collection 1962-1969 (Japanese Mini-LP Remastered Reissue 2012) [FLAC]
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Genre: Folk, Folk Rock, Pop Rock | Label: Warner Music Japan | # WPCR-14591~14602 | Time: 07:31:11
Cardboard sleeve (mini LP) reissue from Peter, Paul and Mary featuring 2012 remastering, using the original master tape. Includes a description and lyrics. Part of a eleven-album Peter, Paul and Mary cardboard sleeve reissue series featuring albums “Peter, Paul And Mary I,” “Moving,” “In The Wind,” “Peter, Paul And Mary in Concert,” “A Song Will Rise,” “See What Tomorrow Brings,” “The Peter, Paul And Mary Album,” “Album 1700,” “In Japan,” “Late Again,” and “Peter, Paul And Mommy.”
The most popular folk group of the 1960s, Peter, Paul and Mary in later decades have also proved themselves to be among the most durable music acts in history. Their longevity dwarfs that of the Weavers, while the fact that the trio continues to be associated with a major record label (Warner Bros.) after decades in the business sets them apart from rivals like the Kingston Trio and the Brothers Four. Then again, perhaps it isn’t so surprising — Peter, Paul and Mary’s roots run deeper than almost any other folk act one might care to name, while their appeal crosses audience lines that other acts couldn’t (and can’t) even approach.
Peter, Paul and Mary were part of the 1960s folk revival, but they can trace their roots and inspiration back to music and events from the late ’40s, and the founding of the Weavers. In 1948, the musical and political left had been galvanized behind the presidential campaign of former Vice President Henry Wallace and his running mate, Senator Glen Taylor. In the wake of that ticket’s defeat that year, in the course of trying to pick up the pieces, singer/composers Lee Hays and Pete Seeger, whose history together went back to the early ’40s, and a group called the Almanac Singers, joined with Fred Hellerman and Ronnie Gilbert in forming the Weavers. They subsequently found themselves with the top-selling record in the country, Goodnight Irene, and for the next two years, the Weavers entertained millions and brought folk music to the public consciousness in a new and vital way through recordings such as “Kisses Sweeter Than Wine.” Then, as word of the members’ personal leftist political histories began circulating, their bookings came to a halt — ironically enough, the Weavers as a performing group were virtually apolitical in their songs and presentation, but that didn’t save them from being blacklisted by the entertainment industry.
They broke up in late 1952, but they left behind two seeds planted in American popular culture. One, deriving from their success, was a modest folk song revival, in some small clubs and especially on college campuses, mostly as entertainment; and the other, a byproduct of their blacklisting, was the coalescing of newly vital, very politically focused branch of folk music. The latter existed as an underground phenomenon, “apart” from a few relatively friendly locales such as New York City’s Greenwich Village; it was invisible to most Americans, but it provided a modest living for older performers, and drew and nurtured new, younger talent.
The entertainment branch manifested itself in the guise of acts like the Easy Riders and their younger successors the Kingston Trio, the Limeliters, the Brothers Four, and the Highwaymen, trios and quartets of male singers who brought a smooth veneer to the music. Each of them had their moment — and sometimes much more than a moment — in the sun and on the charts beginning in the late ’50s. Older performers such as Pete Seeger of the Weavers (as well as the reunited group itself), Ed McCurdy, and Oscar Brand were also around, selling fewer records but making more serious, purposeful records, aimed at smaller audiences. And younger, grittier performers such as Eric Von Schmidt, Dave Van Ronk, and Ramblin’ Jack Elliott were also working and recording. And in 1962 and 1963 came the big-band folk outfits the New Christy Minstrels and the Serendipity Singers, who applied elaborate arrangements, utilizing up to nine singers, to folk melodies.
It was against this backdrop, from the late ’40s onward, that Mary Travers (b. November 9, 1936, Louisville, KY; d. September 16, 2009, Danbury, CT), Peter Yarrow (b. May 31, 1938, New York, NY), and Paul Stookey (b. December 30, 1937, Baltimore, MD), all came of age. Travers, the daughter of journalists, was raised in Greenwich Village, and was both politically and musically aware; she’d made her first recordings while still in high school, during 1954, in a chorus backing Pete Seeger for Folkways Records. She became a member of the Song Swappers, doing albums of international folk songs and camp songs, and also participated in a stage production, The Next President, written by and starring topical comedian Mort Sahl. As a singer, she was heavily influenced by Ronnie Gilbert of the Weavers and also by Jo Mapes, a bluesy white folksinger from Los Angeles who’d emerged in the mid-’50s.
Paul Stookey, born Noel Paul Stookey, had become a huge fan of jazz and what was later called R&B in the mid- to late ’40s, took up guitar, and had formed his first band, the Birds of Paradise, in high school during the early ’50s. He continued singing incollege, and also discovered two additional talents, as a raconteur and as a standup comic, with a special knack for improvising sound effects. He gravitated to Greenwich Village, where he began to learn about folk music. He and Travers became friends and occasionally performed and composed music together. Mostly, however, he did his comedy at local clubs and she made her living working at Elaine Starkman’s boutique on Bleecker Street. (Starkman, later a pioneering art gallery owner in New York’s SoHo, was a well-known Village designer who made the gown Travers wore for her first wedding. In 1961, part of Stookey’s comedy act was captured in Jack O’Connell’s film Greenwich Village Story, another part of which was also shot at the Starkman boutique, though Travers was never glimpsed).
Peter Yarrow was a graduate of Cornell University who fell into music while serving as a teaching assistant. By the end of 1959, he was playing in Greenwich Village and, the following year, was booked on a CBS network television show about folk music, during which he met Albert Grossman. Grossman, who went on to manage Bob Dylan and the Band, proposed the idea to Yarrow of forming a trio that would offer serious folk songs, but utilize the same kind of mixed male/female voices as the Weavers, and also the humor of the Limeliters, and the overall spirit of fun found in acts like the Kingston Trio. Yarrow and Grossman approached Travers, and Stookey came aboard last, dropping his first name in favor of his better-sounding middle name Paul, and Peter, Paul and Mary were born. With the guidance of arranger Milt Okun, who had worked with Harry Belafonte and the Chad Mitchell Trio, they put together a three-part vocal sound that was distinctive and, after seven months of careful preparation, the group emerged to instant acclaim in Greenwich Village.
They were signed to Warner Bros., and their first, self-titled LP was released in March of 1962. It was accompanied by a single, “Lemon Tree,” that rose to number 35 on the charts late that spring. This was a good beginning, but it was their second single, “If I Had a Hammer,” that marked their breakthrough. The song, written by Seeger and Hays in the days of the Weavers, was a rousing number with great hooks and a memorable chorus, and also a definite (yet not threatening) philosophical and political edge. As topical songs go, its timing was perfect — in late 1962, the civil rights movement was becoming a concern to a growing number of middle-class onlookers; “If I Had a Hammer” embodied this zeitgeist in its most idealistic form and, with its upbeat, soulful performance — which made it seductive even to those listeners who cared little about the political controversy of the times — the single hit number ten on the charts. It also won the trio their first two Grammy Awards, for Best Performance by a Vocal Group and Best Folk Recording.
In their first six months of existence, Peter, Paul and Mary, working in a somewhat more favorable political climate, had managed to do what the Weavers never had a chance to do, bringing political concerns to the public through song. And it was a massive public, owing to the fact that PP&M also had a foot in the entertainment side of the folk revival — their music had a decidedly serious edge, but it and the group were also as much fun to listen to as anything the Limeliters or the Highwaymen were doing. Their stage act, as captured on the In Concert album, poked fun at what they did and at themselves, and one couldn’t help but laugh at Stookey’s comedy, which drew on music, self-generated sound effects, and a self-deprecating manner second only to Woody Allen (then a standup comic himself). Additionally, although this has seldom been discussed in retrospect, they had Mary Travers, who not only had a big voice that helped make the records extraordinary, but was also drop-dead gorgeous, and a great asset in their photographs, television appearances, and concerts.
The overall effect, between the entertainment and the songs, was as though the Kingston Trio had suddenly started doing the repertoire of the Almanac Singers, and people were listening. Phil Ochs would attempt a similar but less successful approach to mixing popular music and ideology with his Gold Suit Tour, trying to turn Elvis Presley into Che Guevara. But John Phillips, at that time a folkie himself as a member of the Journeymen, would perfect the formula behind PP&M’s visual appeal in 1966 with the Mamas & the Papas, by putting his wife, Michelle, an ex-model, out front in that lineup.
With “If I Had a Hammer” wafting over the AM airwaves, the Peter, Paul and Mary LP rose to number one and subsequently spent years on the charts. Their second album, Moving, released in January of 1963, got off to a slightly slower start, but it found its way to number two and a 99-week run with help from “Puff (The Magic Dragon),” a song that Peter Yarrow had written in college. The single rose to number two that spring and became one of the most beloved children’s songs of all time, as well as the trio’s passport through any potential controversy.
It was on the heels of that year’s success that Bob Dylan entered the group’s orbit. The young folksinger and songwriter — who came under Grossman’s management in 1963 — hadn’t made much impact with his own recordings on Columbia Records; his lyrics were too piercing and his voice too bluesy, in an environment dominated by much smoother folk sounds. PP&M, however, had no problem with public acceptance, and they took Dylan’s song “Blowin’ in the Wind” to the public in a way that he never could have. Their recording, released in June of 1963, was an instant hit, shipping over 300,000 copies in less than two weeks — many times the number of records that Dylan himself had sold up that point — and eventually rising to number two on the charts. Once more, the trio seemed to grab the moment in history, politics, and art with a song. The era of public activism over civil rights, directed at the administration of President Kennedy, was rising to new heights, and “Blowin’ in the Wind” embodied the spirit of the time. In one fell swoop, it established Bob Dylan as the new conscience of a generation, and PP&M as the voice of that conscience, culminating with their performance of the song at the same August 1963 March on Washington where Martin Luther King, Jr. gave his I Have a Dream speech.
The trio’s third album, In the Wind, which was released in October 1963, not only hit number one on the charts but pulled their two previous albums back into the Top Ten with it. Up to this point, all of the trio’s successes took place during a relatively quiet time in popular music, in which there was little distraction from rock & roll. With the exception of Elvis Presley and a handful of newer acts such as the Beach Boys and Del Shannon, the music was going through one of its periodic flat periods, which had left the field open to folk acts like Peter, Paul and Mary. All of that changed as 1964 dawned.
Suddenly, PP&M found themselves competing with the Beatles and other groups out of England, playing a new, forceful, and relatively sophisticated brand of rock & roll. Peter, Paul and Mary were the only folk-revival group to survive the British Invasion and the ensuing folk-rock boom with their audience and visibility largely intact. Their record sales slackened somewhat, especially their singles, which had a hard time competing on AM radio with the sounds of the British Invasion, and it was three years before they would enjoy another Top Ten hit. Their albums, however, continued selling well, and their bookings never dropped off.
One of the reasons for their continued success, popularity, and relevance was a series of political and historical events separate from the music. The civil rights movement was still going strong as the battleground shifted from the Lincoln Memorial to the back roads of Mississippi — where three college students who had come to help register black voters were murdered in 1964 — to the halls of Congress. The murder of President Kennedy in November of 1963 and Lyndon Johnson’s ascent to the presidency began a series of events that finally forced meaningful civil rights legislation out of Congress. Even as that battle continued raging in the streets, from Birmingham, AL, to Cicero, IL, and other points north. Once the laws were on the books, however, Johnson’s presidency also opened up a new political wound on the American landscape with his escalation of the Vietnam War. In that uneasy environment, Peter, Paul and Mary had the history of involvement, the credentials, and the credibility to address this new issue in ways that, say, the Kingston Trio never could have, even if they’d wanted to. Moreover, their records had a way of not only staying relevant — “If I Had a Hammer” was as topical in 1965 as it had been in 1962, but it was still fun to sing around a campfire — but evolving in their relevancy; as the Vietnam War ran on, and draft notices and departures for the military and service overseas became more commonplace, cuts like the beautiful “500 Miles,” off of their debut album, took on deeply personal resonances for tens, and then hundreds of thousands of people.
For the remainder of the decade, the trio walked a fine line, appealing to liberals and antiwar activists, and raising the consciousness of the interested, but also entertaining middle-of-the-road listeners, and especially to parents who felt their music was safe for younger children. They were accomplishing precisely what the Weavers had set out to do a decade and a half earlier (and, not coincidentally, also exactly what the Weavers’ political opponents had feared the latter group would do, spreading liberal ideas and politics on the popular landscape with pretty music).
Their commercial fortunes and mass appeal remained intact into the second half of the decade. The album In Concert, an unprecedented (for a folk group) double LP, hit number four during the summer and fall of 1964, and the group’s next studio LP, A Song Will Rise got to number eight in the spring of 1965. At the same time, however, its highest-charting single, “For Lovin’ Me,” only reached number 30. See What Tomorrow Brings peaked at number 11 in late 1965, their first placement outside of the Top Ten with an LP, but hardly unrespectable. By 1966, PP&M were feeling the pressure to embellish their music, however, and began adding significant numbers of backup musicians to their records, and exploring more rock-oriented sounds, on The Peter, Paul and Mary Album and, later, Album 1700. Those albums were considered solidly competitive in the musical environment of 1966 and 1967, amid the sounds of folk-rock and psychedelic rock of the era, and both have held up better than those by most of the competition, mostly owing to the quality of the music and the songs.
From the beginning of its history, the trio displayed an uncanny ear for great songs and songwriters — Stookey had steered Grossman to Bob Dylan before many people in Greenwich Village had even heard of him. And in early 1962, before their debut album had even been released, the Kingston Trio had picked up a then-new Pete Seeger song, “Where Have All the Flowers Gone,” from one of the group’s live performances and had a hit with it. During the years 1965-1966, Peter, Paul and Mary gave the first serious airings to the music of Gordon Lightfoot (“For Lovin’ Me”), Laura Nyro (“And When I Die”), and John Denver (“For Baby (Goes Bobbie)”), interspersed with the occasional unrecorded Dylan tune, such as “When the Ship Comes In” and “Too Much of Nothing.” Their sales might not have matched the chart-soaring days of 1963, but the albums had the class, beauty, and substance to stand the test of time.
And when they caught the moment again with a song, the trio proved that they could sell records with the best of them. “I Dig Rock ‘n’ Roll Music,” written by Paul Stookey, brought PP&M back to the upper reaches of the charts and heavy AM radio play with a number nine single in the fall of 1967, right in the middle of the psychedelic boom. The song, which parodied the styles of the Beatles, the Mamas & the Papas, and Donovan, was not only catchy and memorable, but also a reminder to the public that, for all of their devotion to causes and issues, Peter, Paul and Mary was a very funny group as well. For much of the year that followed this commercial comeback, the group was involved in politics, in the form of Senator Eugene McCarthy’s antiwar campaign for the White House. They appeared on behalf of McCarthy, and even released a record supporting him. McCarthy’s candidacy ultimately failed, in a year that also saw the murders of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert Kennedy, though one personal, positive byproduct of the peace campaign was that Peter Yarrow ended up marrying the senator’s daughter.
In 1969, they returned to the middle of the charts again with Yarrow’s “Day Is Done,” a surprisingly autumnal work. They also chalked up another Grammy Award that year for Peter, Paul and Mommy, an album of children’s songs that became a mainstay of their catalog, reaching generation after generation of parents and children. During the summer of 1969, Warner Bros. got word that DJs around the country had begun playing one of the tracks off of the then two-year-old Album 1700, “Leaving on a Jet Plane,” authored by John Denver. Released that September, the single “Leaving on a Jet Plane” peaked at number one, the trio’s only chart-topping single, and also pulled Album 1700 back onto the list of top-selling LPs.
By 1970, PP&M had played many hundreds of concerts together and had spent nine years in harness to each other. It was inevitable that there would be a split at some point, given their different, evolving lives. Mary Travers was now the mother of two daughters, Yarrow was newly married, and Stookey, in addition to wanting to work with new and different musical sounds, had developed a serious belief in Christianity. Amid a flurry of sales behind “Leaving on a Jet Plane,” and the release in the spring of Ten Years Together: The Best of Peter, Paul and Mary (which rose to number 15), the trio completed their concert obligations and announced in the fall of 1970 that they were taking a year’s sabbatical from Peter, Paul and Mary.
The next eight years saw the three musicians release various solo recordings that failed to catch the public’s attention in anything resembling PP&M’s impact. Mary Travers continued working in a folk-pop vein for a time, while Peter Yarrow wrote topical songs dealing with the politics of the time, and Paul Stookey proved the most adventurous of the three musically, exploring harder rock sounds as well as jazz, and delving into Christian-oriented music. They moved around each other’s orbits, appearing on each other’s albums occasionally and even reuniting on behalf of George McGovern’s 1972 presidential campaign, but it was clear by the late ’70s that none of them had enough of an audience on his own to sustain a full-time performing career. Travers moved from Warner Bros. to Chrysalis Records, and to a very brief stay with the Arista label, all without any hits, while Yarrow enjoyed a hit as a songwriter with “Torn Between Two Lovers,” and also saw one of his ’70s compositions, “River of Jordan,” turn up in the 1980 comedy film Airplane, sung by Lorna Patterson in an excruciatingly funny scene.
This was all a long way from their 1960s heyday, and a 1978 reunion album also proved a false start, selling more poorly than any LP in their history. The concerts surrounding that album, however, marked the beginning of a gradual re-forming of the trio. Travers, a single mother with two daughters and a menagerie of pets to look after, was nonetheless concerned with the antinuclear movement, with which Yarrow had long been involved. Stookey rejoined after some hesitation, and by the early ’80s Peter, Paul and Mary were a functioning trio again, playing concerts occasionally and trying to record, including their annual Christmas concerts at Carnegie Hall in New York. Without skipping a beat, they picked up from their early-’60s beginnings, only the civil rights anthems had new meaning in an era when the laws protecting those rights were under attack by the Reagan administration. And they were interspersed with songs about the political strife in El Salvador and the nuclear arms race. As long as they included “Puff (The Magic Dragon)” in their repertoire, however, the trio was still largely immune from attack by the right. The real difficulty was getting their work heard by a larger public in the music environment of the 1980s.
By that late date, none of the major labels were interested in the work of folk groups of their vintage so they did it themselves, initially releasing the live reunion album Such Is Love on their own Peter, Paul and Mary label. They were associated with Gold Castle Records, a promising independent label, for much of the late ’80s, until its failure, but they did get to record a handful of LPs that they ended up owning outright. They retained good relations with Warner Bros., sufficient for Peter Yarrow to personally supervise the digital remastering and transfer of their classic 1960s catalog to compact disc at the end of the 1980s. Finally, in 1992, some 30 years after the trio signed with them, Warner Bros. Records became interested in doing a follow-up to Peter, Paul and Mommy, which had been a perennially good seller in its catalog. The resulting album, Peter, Paul & Mommy, Too and an accompanying television special heralded a return of PP&M to Warner Bros., which subsequently reissued their entire Gold Castle catalog on CD.
After the 1980s, the group had been moving into the role of elder statesmen of the folk community — Mary Travers even hosted a television special that brought together the entire present and former membership of the Kingston Trio on-stage — and this status was borne out in 1995 with the Lifelines album. The latter, an all-star concept album featuring the trio performing with colleagues, older and younger — including ex-Weaver Ronnie Gilbert and blues legend B.B. King — was sufficiently successful to generate a concert follow-up, Lifelines Live, the following year. In 1998, they carried the same all-star singalong concept a step further, in a slightly different direction, with Around the Campfire, and in 1999, Warner Bros. issued its second PP&M best-of compilation, Songs of Conscience & Concern. In 2004, Travers was diagnosed with leukemia and eventually underwent a bone-marrow transplant, but the trio resumed performing by the following year. Successive tours followed during the 2000s until news appeared in 2009 that Travers’ leukemia had re-emerged. She began chemotherapy, but died of complications on September 16th of that year. Yarrow and Stookey, as a tribute to Travers, turned next to a project the trio had been discussing before her death — adding fresh symphonic orchestrations to live tracks of the group from several 1980s and 1990s concerts. The resulting album, The Prague Sessions, appeared early in 2010.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter,_Paul_and_Mary
Peter, Paul And Mary (1962) Japanese Mini-LP Remastered Reissue 2012
The debut album by Peter, Paul & Mary is still one of the best albums to come out of the 1960s folk music revival, a beautifully harmonized collection of the best songs that the group knew, stirring in its sensibilities and its haunting melodies, crossing between folk, children’s songs, and even gospel (“If I Had My Way”), and light-hearted just where it needed to be, with the song “Lemon Tree,” which became their first hit single, and earnest where it had to be, particularly on “If I Had a Hammer.” Ironically, the trio’s version of the latter song, which Pete Seeger and Lee Hayes had written in the early days of the Weavers’ history, helped push popular folk music in a more political direction at the time, but it was another song in their repertory, Seeger’s “Where Have All the Flowers Gone,” that also helped indirectly jump start that movement. The group had performed it in Boston at a concert attended by the Kingston Trio, who immediately returned to New York and cut their own version, which charted as a single early in 1962. Other highlights include “It’s Raining” and “500 Miles.” Peter, Paul & Mary, which hit the top spot on the album charts as part of a 185-week run, is the purest of the trio’s albums, laced with innocent good spirits and an optimism that remains infectious even 40 years later. Along with the rest of the trio’s early catalog, the album was remixed for CD from its original three-track master tape by Peter Yarrow in 1989, which resulted in some of the best sound on any Warner Bros. CDs of material dating from the early ’60s.
Review by Bruce Eder, Allmusic.com
Tracklist:
01. Early In The Morning (01:39)
02. 500 Miles (02:50)
03. Sorrow (02:55)
04. This Train (02:06)
05. Bamboo (02:34)
06. It’s Raining (04:27)
07. If I Had My Way (02:28)
08. Cruel War (03:32)
09. Lemon Tree (02:58)
10. If I Had A Hammer (02:11)
11. Autumn To May (02:52)
12. Where Have All The Flowers Gone (03:55)
Moving (1963) Japanese Mini-LP Remastered Reissue 2012
The trio’s second album is a little less distinctive than its predecessor, which doesn’t mean that it isn’t a beautiful record — just less obviously compelling in its melodies, and perhaps slightly less optimistic in mood. Having expended some of their best material on their debut, the trio reached further for songs here, including the Paul Stookey co-authored “Big Boat” and Mike Settle’s “Settle Down (Goin’ Down That Highway),” neither of which clicked as singles, despite rousing vocals on both and some distinctive guitar virtuosity on the former. The group once again reached back to the 1940s activist folk song tradition with Woody Guthrie’s “This Land Is Your Land,” but the track that everyone ended up knowing from Moving was from a very different corner of the folk tradition — “Puff, the Magic Dragon” was introduced here and rose to number one as a single (and even made the Top 10 in the R? and in those days, it was taken as a beautiful and gentle children’s song that adults could enjoy, the myth of the song’s supposed “drug” message not appearing until 1966. Other highlights include the haunting “Pretty Mary” and the startlingly intricate “A ‘Soalin’,” which became a highlight of their live act as well. Peter Yarrow remixed this album for reissue on CD in 1989, along with much of the rest of the group’s classic Warner Bros. catalog, which has resulted in spectacular clarity and immediacy.
Review by Bruce Eder, Allmusic.com
Tracklist:
01. Settle Down (Goin’ Down That Highway) (01:50)
02. Gone The Rainbow (02:43)
03. Flora (03:11)
04. Pretty Mary (02:02)
05. Puff, The Magic Dragon (03:29)
06. This Land Is Your Land (02:27)
07. Man Come Into Egypt (02:20)
08. Old Goat (03:50)
09. Tiny Sparrow (03:35)
10. Big Boat (02:44)
11. Morning Train (03:38)
12. A’Soalin’ (03:15)
In The Wind (1963) Japanese Mini-LP Remastered Reissue 2012
Their third recording was one of the group’s stronger outings, even if it confirms their status as folk popularizers rather than musical innovators. In particular, this record was essential to boosting the profile of Bob Dylan, including their huge hit cover of “Blowin’ in the Wind,” their Top Ten version of “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right,” and the bluesy “Quit Your Lowdown Ways,” which Dylan himself would not release in the ’60s (although his version finally came out on The Bootleg Series). “Stewball,” “All My Trials,” and “Tell It on the Mountain” were other highlights of their early repertoire, and the dramatic, strident, but inspirational “Very Last Day” is one of the best original tunes the group ever did.
Review by Richie Unterberger, Allmusic.com
Tracklist:
01. Very Last Day (02:34)
02. Hush-A-Bye (02:22)
03. Long Chain On (04:38)
04. Rocky Road (03:41)
05. Tell It On The Mountain (02:57)
06. Polly Von (04:14)
07. Stewball (03:13)
08. All My Trials (03:19)
09. Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright (03:17)
10. Freight Train (02:48)
11. Quit Your Low Down Ways (02:07)
12. Blowin’ In The Wind (02:57)
In Concert (1964) Japanese Mini-LP Remastered Reissue 2012
This double album opens with a then-new Bob Dylan song, “The Times They Are A’ Changin’,” and closes with the best-known song ever written by Pete Seeger and Lee Hayes, “If I Had a Hammer.” That seems to sum up Peter, Paul & Mary, but In Concert offers a lot more than that. The surprises include vignettes in blues and gospel, and, most notably, the group’s humorous digressions. Peter, Paul & Mary spared few opportunities for a good laugh on stage, beginning with the introduction to “A’ Soalin’,” which shows off a lightheartedness that was an essential part of who they were, even as it leads into an exquisitely sung round-like piece that should have found its way into the repertory of Steeleye Span. “Blue” gives the trio a chance to play around with rock & roll, from doo wop to British Invasion, through the song “Old Blue” (satirizing folk music purists at the same time), and Paul Stookey adds his own sound effect embellishments to Woody Guthrie’s “Car-Car.” The solo spots are also worthwhile, particularly Peter Yarrow’s introspective version of “Le Deserteur,” followed by his dazzling, rousing sing-along on “Oh, Rock My Soul”; and Mary Travers’ rendition of “Single Girl,” a low-key proto-feminist song. The group’s rendition of “It’s Raining” achieves an exquisite mix of gossamer textured harmonizing and thematic innocence, and their rendition of the Reverend Gary Davis’ “If I Had My Way” is a bracing re-interpretation for three interwoven voices. Finally, the version of “If I Had a Hammer” that closes this album is superior to their hit single of the same song. The album was remixed digitally from the three-track master by Peter Yarrow for the CD release, which results in very vivid textures and very fine detail.
Review by Bruce Eder, Allmusic.com
Tracklist:
CD1:
01. The Times They Are A-Changin’ (03:22)
02. A’Soalin’ (05:28)
03. 500 Miles (03:03)
04. Blue (04:12)
05. Three Ravens (03:56)
06. One Kind Favor (03:14)
07. Blowin’ In The Wind (03:39)
08. Car-Car (05:07)
09. Puff (The Magic Dragon) (06:22)
10. Jesus Met The Woman (04:36)
CD2:
01. Le Deserteur (04:38)
02. Oh, Rock My Soul (05:50)
03. Paultalk (12:41)
04. Single Girl (02:33)
05. There Is A Ship (03:04)
06. It’s Raining (05:27)
07. If I Had My Way (03:15)
08. If I Had A Hammer (02:45)
A Song Will Rise (1965) Japanese Mini-LP Remastered Reissue 2012
By their fifth album, Peter, Paul & Mary had fallen into a consistency of approach that could be viewed as either dependable or predictable. This had the usual assortment of traditional songs (“Motherless Child,” “The Cuckoo”), songs that had first gained an audience during prior folk revivals (“Wasn’t That a Time”), a bit of original material, mediocre blues (“San Francisco Bay Blues” and Paul Stookey’s “Talkin’ Candy Bar Blues”), and a Bob Dylan song (“When the Ship Comes In”). The biggest find, material-wise, was the Gordon Lightfoot composition “For Lovin’ Me” (a #30 hit single), which gave the Canadian songwriter (who had yet to release his first United Artists LP) some of his first wide exposure in the United States. Overall, the trio’s sound and balance of repertoire had still changed little, if at all, from their debut. They were at their best on folk tunes with sad melodies and harmonies, as on “Jimmy Whalen” and “Ballad of Spring Hill.”
Review by Richie Unterberger, Allmusic.com
Tracklist:
01. When The Ship Comes In (02:38)
02. Jimmy Whalen (02:42)
03. Come And Go With Me (03:07)
04. Gilgarra Mountain (06:04)
05. Ballad Of Spring Hill (Spring Hill Disaster) (03:13)
06. Motherless Child (03:42)
07. Wasn’t That A Time (02:32)
08. Monday Morning (03:21)
09. The Cuckoo (02:21)
10. San Fransisco Bay Blues (03:05)
11. Talkin’ Candy Bar Blues (02:38)
12. For Lovin’ Me (02:09)
See What Tomorrow Brings (1965) Japanese Mini-LP Remastered Reissue 2012
See What Tomorrow Brings is a strong album that plays to the strengths of Peter, Paul, & Mary. There is a good variety of material within their folk format, and a nice esprit de corps that pervades the recording. All members sing lead, which brings a good balance to the proceedings. Worth noting are two early versions of Gordon Lightfoot’s “Early Morning Rain” and Ewan MacColl’s “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face.” Although there isn’t one number that shouts instant classic, all cuts have something to recommend them. Lest we forget the trio’s idealism, the opening song “If I Were Free” speaks to the hope of wars ending and the beginning of peaceful times. “Jane, Jane” and “Because All Men Are Brothers” show the group’s gospel roots, while “The Rising of the Moon,” an intense cut, has Irish music as its base. “Tryin’ to Win” and “On a Desert Island” manifests the humorous side of the trio as they sing about real and imagined love relationships. Throughout the album, arrangements are tasteful, clean, and never obtrusive to the songs presented. All in all, this is a very good album that has variety, strong material, tasteful production, and a fine spirit that gives it a winning edge.
Review by Michael Ofjord, Allmusic.com
Tracklist:
01. If I Were Free (02:48)
02. Betty & Dupree (03:15)
03. The Rising Of The Moon (03:37)
04. Early Mornin’ Rain (03:08)
05. Jane, Jane (02:55)
06. Because All Men Are Brothers (02:14)
07. Hangman (02:51)
08. Brother, (Buddy) Can You Spare A Dime? (02:34)
09. The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face (03:09)
10. Tryin’ To Win (02:38)
11. On A Desert Island (With You In My Dreams) (01:54)
12. The Last Thing On My Mind (02:43)
Album (1966) Japanese Mini-LP Remastered Reissue 2012
With this record the trio were, in their halting fashion, making some concessions to or trying to keep up with the times. This was the first Peter, Paul & Mary album to include significant additional instrumentation other than the usual acoustic guitars. It wasn’t exactly folk-rock, as there were drums on just three tracks. It was more folk-rockish folk, particularly as the rotating cast of backup players included musicians who had played with Bob Dylan (Mike Bloomfield, Kenneth Buttrey, Charlie McCoy, Bobby Gregg, Al Kooper) and Ian & Sylvia (bassists Bill Lee and Ross Savakus). The group was also leaning more toward contemporary songwriters, and made some astute choices in that regard by covering Laura Nyro’s “And When I Die” (when that singer was barely known), Fred Neil’s “The Other Side of This Life,” and Richard Farina’s “Pack Up Your Sorrows.” For those who wanted the “classic” PPM sound, there were a few cuts in that mold, such as “Kisses Sweeter Than Wine.” On the couple of occasions on which they actually tried to play rock music, they sounded, well, uncomfortable, as on the overlong “The King of Names” (with several members of the Paul Butterfield Blues Band) and Paul Stookey’s odd “Norman Normal,” an apparent psychedelic parody of “Secret Agent Man” on which he played all of the instruments and multi-tracked all of the vocals. They would have been better off just being themselves (and Mary Travers’ absence from both of those cuts seemed to indicate that she wasn’t totally into that direction herself). What the group couldn’t control, however, was the unavoidable fact that the times were starting to pass them by.
Review by Richie Unterberger, Allmusic.com
Tracklist:
01. And When I Die (02:37)
02. Sometime Lovin’ (03:06)
03. Pack Up Your Sorrows (03:06)
04. The King Of Names (04:09)
05. For Baby (For Bobbie) (02:46)
06. Hurry Sundown (02:57)
07. The Other Side Of This Life (03:03)
08. The Good Times We Had (02:35)
09. Kisses Sweeter Than Wine (03:07)
10. Norman Normal (02:18)
11. Mon Vrai Destin (02:21)
12. Well, Well, Well (03:14)
Album 1700 (1967) Japanese Mini-LP Remastered Reissue 2012
For a 1967 album that managed to yield a number one hit single and an additional Top Ten smash, Album 1700 was pretty out of sync with contemporary trends. This is not exactly a rock record, but the trio was unquestionably making more use of backup musicians and arrangements that owed a bit to pop/rock. (Paul Butterfield, Paul Winter, Canadian rock band the Paupers, and top New York folk-rock session musicians Paul Griffin, Russ Savakus, and Harvey Brooks all play on the record.) They never did sound too comfortable with that form, but at least they didn’t sound as uncomfortable as they had in the past. The material was an uneven mixture of passably pleasant original tunes covering light comedy and social/philosophical commentary, including an honest to God folk-rock cover of Eric Andersen’s “Rolling Home,” albeit with the pure folk harmonies of their early days unchanged; a Bob Dylan cover (“Bob Dylan’s Dream”) that could have easily fit onto a PPM album early in their career; and, perhaps to make sure there was one song for the toddler when it was played in the family living room, the positively embarrassing “I’m in Love With a Big Blue Frog.” “I Dig Rock and Roll Music,” though it made the Top Ten, was not a wholehearted embrace of the new rock sounds, coming off as a rather savage and strange parody of the Mamas & the Papas. The album’s ace in the hole was the melodic and slightly maudlin “Leaving on a Jet Plane,” an early John Denver composition that would became a number one smash in late 1969, two years after the LP’s release.
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Review by Richie Unterberger, Allmusic.com
Tracklist:
01. Rolling Home (03:30)
02. Leaving On A Jet Plane (03:32)
03. Weep For Jamie (04:12)
04. No Other Name (02:31)
05. The House Song (04:19)
06. The Great Mandala (Wheel Of Life) (04:44)
07. I Dig Rock And Roll Music (02:33)
08. If I Had Wings (02:22)
09. I’m In Love With A Big Blue Frog (02:09)
10. Whatshername (03:27)
11. Bob Dylan’s Dream (04:02)
12. The Song Is Love (02:46)
In Japan (1967) Japanese Mini-LP Remastered Reissue 2012
Peter, Paul and Mary may not have pleased the folk purists very much, but the trio did as much as anyone to bring folk music to a commercial peak in the early ’60s, and by championing new songwriters like Bob Dylan, Fred Neil, and John Denver, among others, and sticking up for rock (even though rock wasn’t even close to what they did), the group showed a sharp sense of time and era. The trio toured Japan in December of 1967, with concerts in both Tokyo and Kyoto, and released a live album there drawn from the two shows — the album was never released in the U.S. This two-disc set makes up for that, with the original album on disc one and a dozen additional tracks from the two shows that were discovered on the original master tapes making up the second disc. It’s a pretty standard Peter, Paul and Mary set for the time, featuring the trio’s signature versions of “Puff, the Magic Dragon,” Pete Seeger’s “If I Had a Hammer,” and Bob Dylan’s “Blowin’ in the Wind,” among others, including a nice version of Fred Neil’s “The Other Side of This Life,” and it’s nicely recorded, full of good will, energy, and the trio’s trademark vocal harmonies.
Review by Steve Leggett, Allmusic.com
Tracklist:
01. Sometime Lovin’ (03:52)
02. No Other Name (02:39)
03. The Other Side Of This Life (03:15)
04. The Good Times We Had (03:17)
05. Paul Talk (06:16)
06. Puff The Magic Dragon (06:06)
07. Serge’s Blues (01:53)
08. For Baby (For Bobbie) (03:21)
09. If I Had My Way (03:25)
10. Don’t Think Twice It’s All Right (03:31)
11. If I Had A Hammer (02:39)
12. This Land Is Your Land (03:34)
Late Again (1968) Japanese Mini-LP Remastered Reissue 2012
With Late Again, Peter, Paul & Mary completed the transition from folk to folk-rock that had begun a couple of years before its release. Granted, it was a transition as slow and halting as that of an ox carrying a piano on its back, but it did actually take place. You can’t call an album that numbers Elvin Bishop, Herbie Hancock, Paul Griffin, Charlie McCoy, Bernard Purdie, John Simon, and Paul Winter among its many accompanying musicians a folk album, after all. As for the music, it was adequate but rather inconsequential, the harmonies polished and pleasing as always. The trio were at this point composing the majority of their own material, with serious-minded, mildly tuneful, subdued, and fairly unmemorable originals, the best of them being “Rich Man Poor Man.” They did add some diversity in flavor and arrangement with the churchy “Tramp on the Street,” the haunting “Hymn,” and occasional orchestration. The most notable track, by far, was their cover of Bob Dylan’s “Too Much of Nothing.” Previously released as a single in late 1967, it was the very first version of a Dylan Basement Tapes-era composition to reach the charts.
Review by Richie Unterberger, Allmusic.com
Tracklist:
01. Apologize (02:51)
02. Moments Of Soft Persuasion (02:35)
03. Yesterday’s Tomorrow (03:34)
04. Too Much Of Nothing (02:31)
05. There’s Anger In The Land (03:46)
06. Love City (Postcards To Duluth) (03:44)
07. She Dreams (02:56)
08. Hymn (02:19)
09. Tramp On The Street (03:51)
10. I Shall Be Released (02:40)
11. Reason To Believe (02:12)
12. Rich Man, Poor Man (03:36)
Peter, Paul and Mommy (1969) Japanese Mini-LP Remastered Reissue 2012
This particular reissue gets a lower audio rating because of a general music mix that comes across as far too busy, between the usual guitars (picked with folky enthusiasm), the vocal arrangements (often with children incorporated), and the addition of not only acoustic bass (heard before on the group’s albums), but banjo, autoharp, hammer dulcimer, etc. The tape hiss is more evident on this album, too. Peter, Paul and Mary had the essential appeal of seeming like a family — Peter Yarrow and Noel Paul Stookey looked as though they could have been brothers, and it really wasn’t a stretch to see Mary as their sister. It’s this picture that informs Peter, Paul and Mommy, an album of songs for children (as played by people accommodating to adults) and prevents it from becoming a lump of sugar. As a result you get Tom Paxton’s “The Marvelous Toy” with its charming imagery, Yarrow’s “Day Is Done,” a melancholy paean to the truth of passing the flame to a new generation, and the outright goofiness of Shel Silverstein’s “Boa Constrictor.” As a fillip you also get “Puff (The Magic Dragon).” While short at 35 minutes (it would have been nice to have as a two-fer) it’s a charming, well-done album that’s as delightful for grown-ups as for kids — and as vital for kids as it ever was. If you have children, you can sit with them and enjoy this album.
Review by Steven McDonald, Allmusic.com
Tracklist:
01. The Marvelous Toy (03:10)
02. Day Is Done (03:17)
03. Leatherwing Bat (02:33)
04. I Have A Song To Sing, O! (04:08)
05. All Through The Night (02:36)
06. It’s Raining (04:09)
07. Going To The Zoo (03:12)
08. Boa Constrictor (00:49)
09. Make-Believe Town (03:49)
10. Mockingbird (01:21)
11. Christmas Dinner (03:03)
12. Puff (The Magic Dragon) (03:37)
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