Friday, September 18, 2009

Now it's just Peter, Paul...

Mary Travers (1936-2009).

Yesterday Peter and Paul, and many others of us, lost Mary Travers to a long struggle with cancer.

I took our daughter Aimee to see the trio just a few years ago here in Jacksonville. They put on a great and moving program, despite the fact that Mary was already ill and had to sit in a chair most of the time. They sounded just like they did when I first heard them 40-odd years ago now.

It was the guitar playing on their renditions of Libba Cotten's "Freight Train" and Bob Dylan's "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right" that first tickled my ear enough to make we want to play the guitar in that finger-picking style. But it was their songs for peace and justice that first got me thinking contrarian thoughts at a time when, with the Vietnam War still raging, if you were against it you were assumed to be some sort of "communist."

Here they do one of my favorite songs, perhaps one you haven't heard. Mary is not the prominent voice here, until she brings it all together at the end.

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