50 Years with Peter, Paul and Mary Airs on PBS

Peter, Paul and Mary’s music and social activism helped to shape a generation. Through the years, the seminal folk trio has touched the hearts and consciences of millions of people worldwide, won five Grammy Awards, received eight gold and five platinum records, had 13 top 40 hits, and been the subject of five PBS documentaries. A new one entitled 50 Years with Peter, Paul and Mary has begun airing on PBS television stations throughout the U.S. Check your local TV listings for days and times in your area.

PBS’ airing of the new documentary coincides with the recent publication of a 144-page coffee table book, Peter, Paul and Mary: 50 Years in Life and Song (Imagine/Chartsbridge), replete with hundreds of photos and evocative narrative text drawn from interviews and personal writings from each of the trio’s members. November also saw the release of a new album, Discovered: Live in Concert (Rhino), featuring 13 songs that the trio performed in concert but never recorded in the studio.

Produced and directed by Emmy Award–winner Jim Brown, 50 Years with Peter, Paul and Mary highlights some aspects of the popular and inspirational trio’s career not previously included in other PBS specials. The new documentary includes rare archival footage stemming from the group’s emergence in New York’s Greenwich Village and the civil rights and anti-war movements of the 1960s of which Peter Yarrow, Noel Paul Stookey and Mary Travers were so much a part. 50 Years with Peter, Paul and Mary spans five decades of music and activism up to the moving memorial for Mary (who died in 2009) and what her former musical partners are doing today.

Archival footage includes the trio singing “Bob Dylan’s “Blowin’ in the Wind” during the 1963 March on Washington at which the late Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his famed “I Had a Dream” speech. As Yarrow observes in the documentary, it was a time when “music began to inspire America, tweak its conscience, and articulate its dreams.” Peter, Paul and Mary are also seen and heard singing a song they wrote for anti-war presidential candidate Eugene McCarthy during a campaign rally in 1968, and visiting homeless shelters to mark the trio’s 25th anniversary in the 1980s. “Activism and advocacy was in our blood,” acknowledges Stookey.

Footage of the trio singing “Deporteees” with Tom Paxton and “Where Have All The Flowers Gone?” with Pete Seeger are excerpted from previous PBS specials. The new documentary wraps with coverage of the touching memorial for Mary Travers in New York City in 2009 and vignettes about Noel Paul Stookey and Peter Yarrow.

Although the PBS documentary bears the name 50 Years with Peter, Paul and Mary, the trio was actually formed in 1961 –- having made its first public appearance that fall at the Bitter End in Greenwich Village. Mary sang with them for 43 years and the trio was on hiatus for seven years

Peter, Paul and Mary released their eponymous debut album for Warner Brothers in 1962. It topped the charts that summer, remained in the top 10 for ten months and the top 20 for two years, and featured the hit single, “If I Had a Hammer.” That song, penned by Pete Seeger and Lee Hays, became an anthem of the civil rights movement and was performed by the trio during the 1963 March on Washington. The trio’s sophomore release featured their own “Puff the Magic Dragon,” a now classic song that has been a children’s favorite for decades. Peter, Paul and Mary’s rendition of Bob Dylan’s “Blowin’ in the Wind” was released in the summer of 1963, and also became a big hit for the trio. These three songs are among the many that can be heard during the documentary. Since Peter, Paul and Mary’s musical history together extends more than 50 years, the documentary’s title and that of the new coffee table book harken back to that of the trio’s album, Late Again.

Yet, as Judy Collins has observed: “Timeless as a river. Sweet as the song of birds in the spring. Familiar as the faces of your loved ones. It seems Peter, Paul and Mary have been in our lives since the very beginning, inspiring us with their joyous and uplifting music.”