Peter, Paul, and Mary Reconsidered

Mack Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

Peter, Paul, and Mary Reconsidered

In a re-sale shop in Jasper, Texas y’r ‘umble scrivener found a CD (a format now as dated as vinyl and electromagnetic tape) for a dollar, and crunched it into the player in his heritage (translation: old) car (because the machine makes a crunching sound when it eats music).

Magic!

Peter, Paul, and Mary, the group’s eponymous 1962 album, and their first, was issued on LP vinyl, which, like pay telephones, passenger trains, typewriters, and Kodak cameras, will require some exposition for those who aren’t card-carrying Medicare-istas.

The oeuvre might perhaps be labeled as folk, but while that style quickly deteriorated into hootenanny-ness, PP&M were never follow-the-fashions derivative. Neither are their songs self-indulgent therapies about themselves and their feelings; their songs are about work, play, justice, childhood, and beauty.

The songs of Peter Yarrow, Paul Stookey, and Mary Travers were only part of the background top-forty a.m. music of your scrivener’s youth, but to his now mature ear they are perfection. The months of rehearsals are evident in the professionalism and cleanness of the performances. PP&M need no gimmicks, echo chambers, or layers of tracking; as true musicians they respect their audience and never lapse into curious noises.

The guitar has become a cliche' of folkabilly, casually slung over the shoulder of yet another 30-something hat-act posing mournfully on railroad tracks for a black-and-white publicity photograph, but the reality is that the legions of three-chord-commandos twanging wires are more annoying than musical. And, really, does anyone really stand on railroad tracks except for high school graduation pictures? Peter and Paul, though, respect the guitar, know the guitar, and rehearse the guitar. In a time when one often suspects that guitar is only a French word for kindling, PP&M remind us that there really are people who know that it is a musical instrument of great sophistication and potential, not an accessory.

And Mary - that voice! Crystalline! The notes to the album describe her, in language that would now be censored for its isms, “a bright, young blonde-and-a-half.” Oh, yeah. Mary never performed in her skivvies or mated with an amplifier; she didn’t have to.

The convention at this point in a narrative is to lapse into filler-language about how people could really sing and play music Back in the Day, but that is nonsense, of course. There are always professional artists who play music worthy of their audiences. There are not always audiences worthy of the artists.

Some criticism of the trio is valid – they allowed themselves to be used for propaganda, and Paul Stookey could be convicted of cultural manslaughter for the powder-blue-tux oozings of “The Wedding Song.” But when the organizers no longer needed Peter, Paul, and Mary, they were discarded as irrelevant and uncool. Their cosmic payback was “I Dig Rock and Roll Music,” which subtly mocked the pretensions of acts which had little to offer but junior-high locker-room language and look-at-me-me-me-ness.

Once upon a time, but definitely not in The Land of Honalee, a pal propped his dinky little transistor radio on some sandbags. The machine’s brave little 9-volt battery and its two-inch speaker, punching below its weight, were pushing out "500 Miles from Home" as broadcast from AFVN Saigon. The Chief didn’t like it, but then we didn’t like him. And, anyway, being 12,000 miles from home will get to you, too.

The gratitude is a little late, but thanks for that moment, Peter, Paul, and Mary.

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