That the days are slipping by all too quickly.
So many bloggers disparage us baby boomers. I’m a baby boomer and damn proud of it. One reason was because of all the good music I got hear growing up.
Which is why I was very sad to hear of the death of Mary Travers tonight.
The band’s publicist, Heather Lylis, says Travers died at Danbury Hospital in Connecticut on Wednesday. She was 72 and had battled leukemia for several years. Travers joined forces with Peter Yarrow and Noel Paul Stookey in the early 1960s. The trio mingled their music with liberal politics, both onstage and off. Their version of "If I Had a Hammer" became an anthem for racial equality. Other hits included "Lemon Tree," "Leaving on a Jet Plane" and "Puff (The Magic Dragon.)" They were early champions of Bob Dylan and performed his "Blowin’ in the Wind" at the August 1963 March on Washington. And they were vehement in their opposition to the Vietnam War, managing to stay true to their liberal beliefs while creating music that resonated in the American mainstream. The group collected five Grammy Awards for their three-part harmony on enduring songs like "Leaving on a Jet Plane," "Puff (The Magic Dragon)" and "Blowin’ in the Wind." At one point in 1963, three of their albums were in the top six Billboard best-selling LPs as they became the biggest stars of the folk revival movement.
Damn.
What sad news. One of my great uncles, a retired USN Captain, named his house Honalea after this song. He was a retired WWII destroyer skipper and we really used to enjoy visiting his family in the Norfolk tidewater when I was growing up in the ’60’s. He was a bit of rebel. He would wear his navy great coat and a beret with his “texaco” star when he visited Carlisle in winter. He papered his downstairs bathroom in Norfolk with a number of certificates for “wintering over” in Antarctica.
That song always brings back some deep memories. All of them good.
I met Mary a couple of times. Very sweet and genuinely nice person. And her daughter was really hot!
you might want to mosey on over to Gi Korea. he has an article on the airforce threatening to withdraw f-16’s from Japan. A rumor?
MAry’s death affected me more than any other singer’s death I can recall. I always felt she was sincere and she was a genuinely decent person.
Her death leaves a vacuum.