DANBURY, Conn. — Mary Travers, a member of the hugely popular 1960s folk trio Peter, Paul and Mary, has died.
The band’s publicist, Heather Lylis, said Travers died Wednesday at Danbury Hospital in Connecticut. 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. 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.
They were vehement in their opposition to the Vietnam War.
The group collected five Grammy Awards. 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.
They debuted at the Bitter End in 1961, and their beatnik look — a tall blond flanked by a pair of goateed guitarists — was a part of their initial appeal. As New York Times critic Robert Shelton put it, “Sex appeal as a keystone for a folk-song group was the idea of the group’s manager, Albert Grossman, who searched for months for ‘the girl.’ ”
Mary Allin Travers was born Nov. 9, 1936, in Louisville, Ky., the daughter of journalists who moved the family to Greenwich Village. She quickly became enamored of folk performers and was soon performing herself.
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