Peter Yarrow of folk trio Peter, Paul and Mary dies aged 86
Share:
Known for his political songs as well as Puff, the Magic Dragon, the group’s co-songwriter died of bladder cancer. Peter Yarrow, a vocalist with the US folk trio Peter, Paul and Mary, has died aged 86. The cause was bladder cancer, which Yarrow had been diagnosed with four years ago.
Yarrow took lead vocals on Puff, the Magic Dragon, The Great Mandella and Day Is Done, songs he either wrote or co-wrote with Noel Paul Stookey. Stookey is the last surviving member of the group, as Mary Travers died in 2009. Stookey told the New York Times that Yarrow was his “creative, irrepressible, spontaneous and musical younger brother” whom he “grew to be grateful for, and to love, the mature-beyond-his-years wisdom and inspiring guidance he shared with me like an older brother. Perhaps Peter was both of the brothers I never had and I shall deeply miss both of him.”.
In their 1960s heyday, the group had six US Top 10 singles and one No 1, a cover of John Denver’s Leaving on a Jet Plane, as well as five Top 10 albums. They were also politically significant. In August 1963, the progressive trio joined the March on Washington and sang a cover of Bob Dylan’s Blowin’ in the Wind on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, which cemented the song’s legacy as an anthem of the civil rights movement.
