Peter Yarrow (born May 31, 1938) is an American singer and songwriter who found fame as a member of the 1960s folk trio Peter, Paul and Mary. Yarrow co-wrote (with Leonard Lipton) one of the group's best known hits, "Puff, the Magic Dragon". He is also a political activist and has supported causes that range from opposition to the Vietnam War to school anti-bullying programs. Yarrow was convicted in 1970 of molesting a 14-year-old girl, for which he was pardoned in 1981 by President Jimmy Carter.
Peter Yarrow was born in Manhattan, the son of Vera Wisebrode (née Vira Burtakoff) and Bernard Yarrow. His parents were educated Ukrainian Jewish immigrants, whose families had settled in Providence, Rhode Island.
Bernard Yarrow (1899–1973) attended the Jagiellonian University (Kraków, Poland) and the Odesa University (Odesa, Ukraine), before emigrating to the United States in 1922, at the age of 23.[1] He anglicized his surname from Yaroshevitz to Yarrow, obtained a Bachelor of Science degree from Columbia University in 1925 where he joined Phi Sigma Delta fraternity,[2] and graduated from Columbia Law School in 1928. He then maintained a private law practice in New York City until 1938, when he was appointed an assistant district attorney under the then-district attorney, Thomas E. Dewey. In 1944 he was recruited into the Office of Strategic Services, where he served with distinction.[3]
After the war, Bernard Yarrow joined Sullivan and Cromwell, the Dullesbrothers' law firm.[4] He was a founding board member of the National Committee for a Free Europe, an anti-Communist organization. In 1952, he became a senior vice-president of the CIA-funded Radio Free Europe, an organization he helped to found.[5]
Yarrow's mother Vera (1904–1991), who had come to America at age three, became a speech and drama teacher at New York's Julia Richman High School for girls. She and Bernard divorced in 1943 when their son Peter was five, and Vera subsequently married Harold Wisebrode, the executive director of the Central Synagogue in Manhattan.[6] Bernard Yarrow married his wartime London OSS partner Silvia Tim, and converted to Protestantism.[7]
Yarrow began singing in public during his last year at Cornell while participating in Harold Thompson's popular American Folk Literature course, colloquially known on campus as "Romp-n-Stomp". The course was "a highlight of late-1950s student life at Cornell", Yarrow reminisced, and the ability to sing and play guitar was a prerequisite for enrollment.[8] Thompson would lecture on a topic for 20 or 30 minutes and afterwards a student would sing songs related to his theme. The experience of performing in front of a large audience was a thrilling one for Yarrow, who discovered he loved it. He branched out to lead community sings on weekends.
Upon graduation, Yarrow played in folk clubs in New York City, appeared on the CBS television show Folk Sound USA, and performed at the Newport Folk Festival, where he met manager and musical impresario Albert Grossman.[9] One day, the two were at Israel Young's Folklore Center in Greenwich Village discussing Grossman's idea for a new group that would be "an updated version of the Weavers for the baby-boom generation ... with the crossover appeal of The Kingston Trio". Yarrow noticed a picture of Mary Travers on the wall and asked Grossman who she was. "That's Mary Travers," Grossman said. "She'd be good if you could get her to work."[10] The lanky, blonde Kentucky-born Travers was well connected in Greenwich Village folk song circles. While still a high-school student at the progressive Elizabeth Irwin High School she had been picked out by Elizabeth Irwin's chorus leader Robert De Cormier to sing in a trio called The Song Swappers, backing up Pete Seeger in the 1955 Folkways LP reissue of the Almanac Singers' The Talking Union and two other albums. As well as performing twice with Seeger at Carnegie Hall, Travers had also played a folksinger in a short-lived Broadway play called The Next President, starring satirist Mort Sahl, but she was known to be painfully introverted and loath to sing professionally.[11]
To draw Travers out, "Mr. Yarrow went to Ms. Travers's apartment on MacDougal Street, across from the Gaslight, one of the principal folk clubs. They harmonized on 'Miner's Lifeguard', a union song, and decided that their voices blended. To fill out the trio, Ms. Travers suggested Noel Stookey, a friend doing folk music and stand-up comedy at the Gaslight." They chose the catchy "Peter, Paul and Mary" as the name for their group, since Noel Stookey's middle name was Paul, and rehearsed intensively for six months, touring outside New York before debuting in 1961 as a polished act at The Bitter End nightclub in Greenwich Village. There, the singers quickly developed a following and signed a contract with Warner Brothers.[11]
Warner released Peter, Paul and Mary's "Lemon Tree" as a single in early 1962. The trio then released "If I Had a Hammer", a song written in 1949 by Pete Seeger and Lee Hays to protest the imprisonment of Harlem City Councilman Benjamin J. Davis, Jr. under the Smith Act. "If I had a Hammer" garnered two Grammy Awards in 1962. The trio's first album, the eponymous Peter, Paul & Mary, remained in the Top 10 for ten months and in the Top 20 for two years; it sold more than two million copies. The group toured extensively and recorded numerous albums, both live and in the studio.[12][13]
In June 1963, Peter, Paul and Mary released a 7" single of "Blowin' in the Wind" by the then-relatively unknown Bob Dylan, who was also managed by Grossman. "Blowin' in the Wind" sold 300,000 copies in the first week of release; by August 17, it was number two on the Billboard pop chart, with sales exceeding one million copies. Yarrow recalled that when he told Dylan he would make more than $5,000 (equivalent to $50,000in 2023[14]) from the publishing rights, Dylan was speechless.[15] On August 28, 1963, Peter, Paul and Mary appeared on stage with the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. at his historic March on Washington where their performance of "Blowin' in the Wind" established it as a civil rights anthem.[16] Their version also spent weeks on Billboard's easy listening chart. By 1964 the 26-year-old Yarrow had joined the Board of the Newport Folk Festival, where he had performed as an unknown just four years earlier.[17]
Yarrow's songwriting helped to create some of Peter, Paul and Mary's best-known songs, including "Puff, the Magic Dragon", "Day Is Done", "Light One Candle", and "The Great Mandala". As a member of the trio, he earned a 1996 Emmy nomination for the Great Performances special LifeLines Live, a highly acclaimed celebration of folk music, with their musical mentors, contemporaries, and a new generation of singer-songwriters.[18]
Yarrow was instrumental in founding the New Folks Concert series at both the Newport Folk Festival and the Kerrville Folk Festival.[19] His work at Kerrville has been called his "most important achievement in this arena".[20]
Yarrow co-wrote and produced "Torn Between Two Lovers", a number one hit for Mary McGregor. He also produced three CBS TV specials based on "Puff, the Magic Dragon", which earned an Emmy nomination for him. In 1978 Yarrow organized Survival Sunday, an antinuclear benefit, and after a period of separation, he was once again joined by Stookey and Travers.[21]
Yarrow and his daughter, Bethany Yarrow, often perform together. Together with cellist Rufus Cappadocia, they form the trio Peter, Bethany, and Rufus.[22] They released the CD Puff & Other Family Classics. In 2008, the musical special Peter, Bethany & Rufus: Spirit of Woodstock, featuring a live performance of the band, aired on public television.[23]
Yarrow has long been an activist for social and political causes. What he did was not always popular. According to The New York Times:
As their fame grew, Peter, Paul and Mary mixed music with political and social activism. In 1963, the trio marched with Martin Luther King Jr. in Selma, Alabama, and Washington, D.C. The three participated in countless demonstrations against the war in Vietnam. They sang at the 1969 March on Washington, which Mr. Yarrow helped to organize. Though their activism provoked a steady stream of death threats, they were never harmed. "But for years, I used to bite my fingernails on stage," [Mary] Travers says. "There you are and look like the back porch light, and stare out at 12,000 or 15,000 people. Any one of whom could have had a gun."[26]
Operation Respect
In 2000, in an effort to combat school bullying, Yarrow helped start Operation Respect,[27] a nonprofit organization that brings to children, in schools and camps, a curriculum of tolerance and respect for each other's differences. The project began as a result of Yarrow and his daughter Bethany and his son Christopher having heard the song Don't Laugh at Me (written by Steve Seskin and Allen Shamblin) at the Kerrville Folk Festival.[28][29][30]
Operation Respect has been my main and all-consuming work for the past 10 years. My perception is that the kind of bullying, humiliation that goes on in children's schools leads to high rates of depression that was virtually unknown when I was young and the high suicide rate of teenagers which we know is almost inevitably caused by bullying or mean-spiritedness. It is a reflection of the role models that young people observe on TV shows like a lot of the reality shows. It is also part and parcel of the characteristics in the adult world of America.[31]
Other activism
Yarrow's leadership in the campaign to free Soviet Jewry inspired another generation. Of the song "Light One Candle", Rabbi Allison Bergman Vann wrote:
Peter Yarrow's now famous song, which was written in 1983, became a defining song for my generation of high school and college students to become activists, to make the world a better place. I heard Peter Yarrow singing that song on the steps of the Capitol, in 1987, twenty years ago next week, during the march to free Soviet Jews. Listening to him sing, surrounded by literally thousands of like-minded individuals, I learned of my obligation to change the world; to engage in tikkun olam, repair of our broken world. And, during that incredible day, I knew that we could, indeed, change the world.[32][bettersourceneeded]
In 2005, Yarrow performed in Ho Chi Minh City at a concert to benefit the Vietnam Association of Victims of Agent Orange; Yarrow pleaded with the Vietnamese for forgiveness of the United States.[33]
Yarrow is a member of Braver Angels.[38] On April 3, 2021, he participated in an online interfaith Passover Seder hosted by the organization.
Personal life
Yarrow has cited Judaism as one of the roots of his liberal views.[39]
While campaigning for 1968 presidential candidate Eugene McCarthy, Yarrow met McCarthy's niece, Mary Beth McCarthy, in Wisconsin. He was 31, she was 20.[40][41] They were married in October 1969[39] in Willmar, Minnesota. Paul Stookey wrote "Wedding Song (There Is Love)" as his gift for their wedding and first performed it at St. Mary's Church in Willmar. They had two children, but later divorced.[42]
In December 2000, Yarrow's Larrivee acoustic guitar was stolen on an airplane flight. In early 2005, fans spotted the guitar on eBay. The FBI recovered it in Sunny Isles Beach, Florida, and returned it to Yarrow. He did not press charges, as the person from whom it was recovered was not the same individual as the one who had stolen it.[43]
Yarrow performed the world premiere of "The Colonoscopy Song" on the CBS early morning program The Early Show on March 9, 2010.[44]
Yarrow has acknowledged being an alcoholic, and sought treatment for the disease. He considers himself in recovery.[45]
A longtime resident of New York City, Yarrow has also owned a vacation home in Telluride, Colorado. Yarrow's son, Christopher, is a visual artist who in the late 2000s owned an emporium in Portland, Oregon, named The Monkey & The Rat.[46]
Criminal conviction and pardon
In 1970, Yarrow was convicted and served three months in prison for taking "improper liberties" with 14-year-old Barbara Winter, who went with her 17-year-old sister to Yarrow's hotel room in Washington, DC seeking an autograph. Winter stated that Yarrow answered the door naked and made her masturbate him until he ejaculated. Yarrow served three months of a 1–3 year prison sentence.[47][48][49][50][51] He apologized for the incident, saying that "it was an era of real indiscretion and mistakes by categorically male performers. I was one of them. I got nailed. I was wrong. I'm sorry for it."[48]
Yarrow was granted a presidential pardon by Jimmy Carter on January 19, 1981, the day before Carter's presidency ended.[47][48][52] For decades, Yarrow avoided mention of the assault, but by the early 2000s, it became a campaign issue for politicians he supports.[50][53][54] In 2004, U.S. Representative Martin Frost of Texas, a Democrat, canceled a fundraising appearance with Yarrow after his opponent ran a radio advertisement about Yarrow's offense;[50] in 2013, Republican politicians in New York called on Democratic congressional candidate Martha Robertson to cancel a scheduled fundraiser with Yarrow.[53][55] In 2019, he was uninvited from a folk music festival when the organizers were informed of his conviction.[56]
In May 2021, The Washington Post wrote that "[Yarrow's] pardon by Carter — perhaps the only one in U.S. history wiping away a conviction for a sexual offense against a child — escaped scrutiny when it happened. It was granted just hours before the American hostages in Iran were freed, which captured headlines for weeks." The same article details other allegations of sexual assault of minors made against Yarrow.[47]
Awards and honors
Yarrow received the Allard K. Lowenstein Award in 1982 for his "remarkable efforts in advancing the causes of human rights, peace, and freedom".[57] In 1995 the Miami Jewish Federation recognized Yarrow's continual efforts by awarding its Tikkun Olam Award for his part in helping to "repair the world".[57][58]
The Peter Yarrow Songbook: Favorite Folk Songs, by Peter Yarrow, Terry Widener (illustrator), Sterling Publishing, released November 4, 2008, ISBN978-1-4027-5961-1
The Peter Yarrow Songbook: Sleepytime Songs, by Peter Yarrow, Terry Widener (Illustrator), Sterling Publishing, released November 4, 2008, ISBN978-1-4027-5962-8
"Puff, the Magic Dragon" is a song written by Peter Yarrow of Peter, Paul and Mary from a poem by Leonard Lipton. It was made popular by Peter, Paul and Mary in a 1962 recording released in January 1963.
Peter, Paul and Mary were an American folk group formed in New York City in 1961 during the American folk music revival phenomenon. The trio consisted of Peter Yarrow, Paul Stookey, and Mary Travers. The group's repertoire included songs written by Yarrow and Stookey, early songs by Bob Dylan, and covers of other folk musicians. They were enormously successful in the early- and mid-1960s, with their debut album topping the charts for weeks, and helped popularize the folk music revival. After the death of Travers in 2009, Yarrow and Stookey continued to perform as a duo under their individual names.
Noel Paul Stookey is an American singer-songwriter who was famous for being a member of the 1960s folk trio Peter, Paul and Mary; however, he has been known by his first name, Noel, throughout his life. Nowadays, he continues to work as a singer and an activist, performing as a solo artist, and occasionally with former-bandmate Peter Yarrow.
Mary Allin Travers was an American singer-songwriter who found fame as a member of the 1960s folk trio Peter, Paul and Mary, along with Peter Yarrow and Paul Stookey. Travers grew up amid the burgeoning folk scene in New York City's Greenwich Village, and she released five solo albums. She sang in the contralto range.
Albert Bernard Grossman was an American entrepreneur and manager in the American folk music and rock and roll scene. He was famous as the manager of many of the most popular and successful performers of folk and folk-rock music, including Bob Dylan; Janis Joplin; Peter, Paul and Mary; the Band; Odetta; Gordon Lightfoot; and Ian & Sylvia.
Peter, Paul and Mommy, released on Warner Bros. in 1969, is the trio Peter, Paul and Mary's first children's album. It contains hits like "Puff the Magic Dragon", among others. The album reached No. 12 on Billboard's Top LPs chart. The single "Day is Done" reached number 7 on the Easy Listening chart and number 21 on the Pop Singles chart.
The Kerrville Folk Festival is a music festival with camping, held for nearly three weeks each year, in late spring/early summer, at Quiet Valley Ranch near Kerrville, Texas. The festival draws around 30,000 people. It aims to present established artists and promote new talent.
Album 1700 is the seventh studio album by American folk music trio Peter, Paul and Mary, released in 1967. It produced the band's most successful and final hit, a recording of the John Denver song "Leaving on a Jet Plane". The album peaked at number 15 on Billboard magazine's Top LP chart and was nominated for a Grammy Award in the Best Folk Performance category. Album 1700 was so named because its original LP issue was Warner Bros. Records catalog number W-1700 for the mono version and WS-1700 for the stereo version. It stayed on the charts and rose again in 1969, thanks to the single release of "Leaving on a Jet Plane".
Peter, Paul and Mary is the debut studio album by American folk trio Peter, Paul and Mary, released in May 1962 on Warner Bros. Records. Released in both mono and stereo on catalog no. 1449, it is one of the rare folk albums to reach No. 1 on the Billboard chart in the US, where it remained for over a month. The lead-off singles "If I Had a Hammer" and "Lemon Tree" reached numbers 10 and 35 respectively on the Billboard Pop Singles chart. It was the group's biggest selling studio album, eventually certified Double Platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America for U.S. sales of more than two million copies.
A Song Will Rise is the fourth studio album by the American folk music trio Peter, Paul & Mary, released in 1965.
The Best of Peter, Paul, and Mary: Ten Years Together is a 1970 greatest hits release by American folk trio Peter, Paul, and Mary. It is the last album released before the group split up in 1970.
Moving is the second album by the American folk music trio Peter, Paul & Mary, released in January 1963. The third single, "Puff, the Magic Dragon," was a huge hit and a defining song for the trio, reaching #2 on the Hot 100, #1 on the Easy Listening, and #10 on the R&B Charts.
In the Wind is the third album by the American folk music trio Peter, Paul and Mary, released in October 1963, a few months before the arrival of the Beatles heralded the British Invasion. It was reissued on audio CD in 1990.
Steve Seskin is an American singer, songwriter, and musician whose songs have been recorded by recording artists Garth Brooks, Reba McEntire, Waylon Jennings, Tim McGraw, Colin Raye, and Mark Wills among others. The debut single from McGraw's Set This Circus Down, "Grown Men Don't Cry", was nominated for a 2002 Grammy award and also garnered the No. 1 position on the Billboard Country Single Chart in June 2001. Seskin also is known for performing at schools in support of the Operation Respect/Don't Laugh at Me project, named after "Don't Laugh at Me," a song he wrote with Allen Shamblin that was recorded by Mark Wills and Peter, Paul and Mary, among others.
See What Tomorrow Brings is the fifth studio album by the American folk music trio Peter, Paul & Mary, released in 1965.
The Peter, Paul and Mary Album, also known as Album, is the sixth studio album by the American folk music trio Peter, Paul and Mary, released in 1966.
In Concert is a live album by the American folk music trio Peter, Paul & Mary, released in 1964. It was compiled from concerts at San Francisco, Sacramento, Long Beach in California; Daytona Beach, Florida and Terre Haute, Indiana. Supporting the trio, Dick Kniss plays bass. It was digitally re-mixed and re-mastered and released on CD in 1989.
Peter, Paul & Mommy, Too, released on Warner Bros. in 1993, is a children's album by the trio Peter, Paul and Mary. It was recorded on October 31 and November 1, 1992, at the Brooklyn Academy of Music's Harvey Theater. The album follows from the first children's album they released in 1969, Peter, Paul and Mommy.
"Day Is Done" is a song written by Peter Yarrow. It was recorded by Yarrow's group Peter, Paul and Mary and released as a single in 1969. An anti-war protest song of the Vietnam War era, the song reached No. 21 on Billboard Hot 100, and was ranked No. 48 on the Billboard year-end Top Easy Listening Singles chart of 1969.
No Easy Walk to Freedom is a 1986 studio album by American folk music trio Peter, Paul and Mary. Its release coincided with the group's 25th anniversary. Produced by John McClure and Peter Yarrow, the album was nominated in the Best Contemporary Folk Album category at the 29th Annual Grammy Awards.
↑ Scott R. Benarde, Stars of David: Rock'n'roll's Jewish Stories (Brandeis University Press, 2008), p. 57. See also Lynn Katalin Kádár, "At War While at Peace United States Cold War Policy and the National Committee for a Free Europe, Inc.", pp. 7–69 in Lynn Katalin Kádár, editor, The Inauguration of "Organized Political Warfare": The Cold War Organizations Sponsored by the National Committee for a Free Europe (St. Helena, California: Helena History Press, 2013).
↑ Benarde, Stars of David: Rock'n'roll's Jewish Stories, p. 58.
↑ Ryan, Stephanie L. (November 5, 2008). "Hear folk music legend Peter Yarrow at Northshire". Bennington Banner. Yarrow spent parts of several days in the final run up to the election at the Obama phone banks, singing for the workers and giving them a historical perspective on what they were doing. "In a way, this is a continuation of the march on Washington in 1963, when Peter, Paul and Mary performed," he said.
↑ "Peter Yarrow and Kyp Malone at Occupy Wall Street". The Village Voice. October 3, 2011. Retrieved September 13, 2020. This afternoon, Peter Yarrow of Peter, Paul and Mary set up on a makeshift bandstand and played a set with some friends, serenading the occupiers with "Puff, the Magic Dragon", "If I Had a Hammer", and "Where Have All the Flowers Gone?"
↑ Potter, Mitch (October 3, 2011). "Occupy Wall Street 'zombies' keep protest alive". Toronto Star. Retrieved September 13, 2020. One example: the arrival Monday of a grinning, white-haired Peter Yarrow, who mined antiquities from his Peter, Paul and Mary songbook, including the civil-rights anthem "We Shall Not Be Moved".
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