Peter, Paul and Mary and a Sunday Morning

The other day, I came across a note I had left for myself over a year ago with links to two wonderful videos with Peter, Paul and Mary.  I may have posted them a years ago – or not.  But even if I did, they deserve a repeat.
 
This first is a feature on the group that CBS Sunday Morning originally did in 1984, when Charles Kuralt was hosting the show, reported by Heywood Hale Broun, and then repeated last January when Peter Yarrow passed away at the age of 86.  It’s very interesting with wonderful music, as they talk about their early days, a bit about when they split about for eight years, and then reuniting – at that point for six years, but it went on much longer than that, ultimately for 31 years until Mary Travers died in 2009.  But even at that, Noel Paul Stookey and Peter Yarrow still toured together until last year.  So, the reunion lasted 47 years.
 
During their years apart, I saw Yarrow in solo concert in Chicago, and then (after they’d reunited) I saw Stookey perform separately, for an unexpected but enjoyable reason.  I was working on the Stephen King movie, Pet Sematary, which we made in Ellsworth, Maine, in 1988.  And as it happened, he lived about 10 miles down the road in Blue Hill.  And apparently, every once in a while, he’d give a solo performance.  I never saw Mary Travers perform separately.  Or all three together.
 
I did, also, see Noel Paul Stookey and their longtime bass player, Dick Kniss, when I was a little kid.  It was on my family taking a day outing to O’Hare Airport (something families did back then),  I was probably around 10 years old at the time.  I wrote about it here https://www.elisbergindustries.com/blog/peter-paul-and-mary-and-newport, so I won’t repeat the story – but it was very offbeat.  The short version is that my brother thought he saw a famous basketball player, Jerry Lucas, and he and I went off throughout the airport to find him.  (For some reason, we thought we would in the world’s busiest airport, and for some reason, our parents let us – which it seems was something parents did back then.)  We actually did find him, and excited, we tracked down our parents and sat down to rest.  And there next to us were guitar cases and a bass case, with tags that at “Peter, Paul and Mary”.  (Apparently, professional musicians leaving their instruments unattended in international airports was something they did back then…too.)  So, we decided to wait.  And wait.  And eventually Paul Stookey and Dick Kniss came back to get their instruments.
 
In the piece, Stookey talks about the split having been because he had a home life and just didn’t want to keep traveling any more.  And from what I know of his family life, I suspect that did come into play.  But I also suspect Mary Travers is also on the mark when she later talks about arguments they were having, which I recall reading about at the time.  (Related to Stookey inserting religion into his comments a lot more, Travers not liking that the men were doing most of the talking during the show, and Yarrow having some legal troubles.)  But happily, they got over it all and back together and stayed together for a very long time.
 
One last time.  The segment mentions that their reuniting came about after they performed together at a 1978 anti-nuke event.  And that’s true.  But the seed had been planted in a bit before, in 1972.  That’s when there was a major “Come Together” reunion concert to raise money for the George McGovern presidential campaign that was held at Madison Square Garden and featured three renowned teams that had split up – Peter, Paul and Mary, as well as Simon and Garfunkle, and Mike Nichols and Elaine May.  That is one heck of a spectacular concert.  On its own, but also as a three-part reunion.