Peter, Paul and Mary

Peter, Paul and Mary was an American folk group formed in New York City in 1961 during the American folk music revival. The trio consisted of Peter Yarrow (guitar, tenor vocals), Paul Stookey (guitar, baritone vocals), and Mary Travers (contralto vocals). The group's repertoire included traditional songs, songs written by Yarrow and Stookey, early songs by Bob Dylan, and songs of other "folk-revival" musicians such as Pete Seeger.They were very successful in the early- and mid-1960s, with their debut album topping the charts for weeks, and helped popularize the folk music revival. Following Travers's death in 2009, Yarrow and Stookey continued to perform as a duo. Yarrow died in 2025, leaving Stookey the sole surviving member of the group.Travers said she was influenced by Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, and the Weavers. In May 1963, Stookey described the formation and dynamics of the group on Folk Music Worldwide, an international short-wave radio show in New York City. In the 2004 documentary Peter, Paul & Mary: Carry It On – A Musical Legacy, members of the Weavers discuss how Peter, Paul and Mary took over the torch of the social commentary of folk music in the 1960s.The group were inducted into the Vocal Group Hall of Fame in 1999. Peter, Paul and Mary received the Sammy Cahn Lifetime Achievement Award from the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2006.Manager Albert Grossman created Peter, Paul and Mary in 1961, after auditioning several singers in the New York folk scene, including Dave Van Ronk, who was rejected as too idiosyncratic and uncommercial, and Carolyn Hester. After rehearsing Yarrow, Stookey and Travers out of town in Boston and Miami, Grossman booked them into The Bitter End, a coffee house, nightclub and popular folk music venue in New York City's Greenwich Village.

Biography summary from English Wikipedia, photograph via Wikimedia Commons.