the rix mix

I had only one of their LPs, Album 1700, given to me as a gift. It had a hit song I disliked, "I Dig Rock & Roll Music," which was unnecessarily sarcastic, & wrong-headed in what it considered rock & roll. But not only were PP&M the progenitors of pop-folk acts like Donovan & The Mamas & the Papas, they were also peers. Because the album came out in 1967 & was hugely successful. Album 1700 also had a fine original song, "The Great Mandala," & an elevating rendition of a minor early Dylan song, "Bob Dylan's Dream."

We tend to forget that PP&M made a star of a fringe Greenwich Village songwriter named Bob Dylan. He knows how much he owes them for "Blowin' In the Wind." After those first two exiliarating years at the end of the folk-revival, as "voices of a generation, " performing at the "I Have A Dream" demonstration at the Lincoln Memorial, they remained popular & sold a lot of records throughout The Beatles years, outlasting The Kingston Trio, The Limelighters, The Journeymen, & all those other nearly forgotten folk groups. They didn't record an undeniably great album, but all their Sixties LPs include first rate songs.

PP&M could easily have wow'd the crowd at Woodstock. Everyone knew their most famous numbers. It may have been the on-going popularity of PP&M that allowed so many rock artists to express & indulge their folk music inclinations, & they were a bridge connecting Joni Mitchell & James Taylor to earlier folk performers.

PP&M broke up in 1970 - they were tired & tired of each other. It wasn't a deeply rancorous split, they loved each other. They began appearing together again in the late-Seventies, re-coalesced, & continued performing as they liked, on their own schedule, until Mary died. Parents brought their children to PP&M concerts, & the children grew up & brought their children, which is, as I think of it, old Pete Seeger's ideal. They had something for everybody, serious songs, love songs, silly songs, & lots of sing-a-long songs. Like Pete, they could sell out Carnegie Hall anytime they booked it. They were everything Pete's blacklisted group, The Weavers, had tried to be, & more. They were loved all over the world for good reason: They represented our better angels.

The beauty of Mary Travers was that she was just who we thought she was back in the Sixties; a hip Greenwich Village girl who grew up around the old folkies & leftists & came of age while the Beat poets were in town. She was, in her way, completely authentic. That's why I loved her, although I myself was never a folkie.

(Yes, I lived for many years with a woman who somewhat resembled Mary Travers. )

Labels: culture, growing up, music, obituary