Peter Yarrow of folk trio Peter, Paul and Mary dies aged 86

Peter Yarrow, vocalist with US folk trio Peter, Paul and Mary, has died aged 86. The cause was bladder cancer, which Yarrow had been battling for four years, a publicist confirmed.

Yarrow took lead vocals on Puff the Magic Dragon, The Great Mandala and Day Is Done, songs he either wrote or co-wrote with Noel Paul Stookey. Stookey is the last surviving member of the group; Mary Travers died in 2009.

In their 60s heyday, the group had six US Top 10 singles and one No 1, a cover of John Denver’s Leavin’ 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.

Yarrow’s songs were often political, telling the story of a war objector on hunger strike in The Great Mandala, from 1967, and suggesting to his son, on Day Is Done, that his generation could make a better world.

In 1970, he was convicted and served three months in prison for “taking indecent liberties with a minor” after then 14-year-old Barbara Winter said that when she went to his hotel room in Washington, DC in search of an autograph, he answered the door naked and made her touch him until he ejaculated.

Yarrow was granted a presidential pardon by Jimmy Carter the day before Carter’s presidency ended in January 1981. In 2019, Yarrow’s planned performance at the Colorscape Chenango Arts festival in New York state was cancelled owing to resurfaced awareness of the conviction.

Yarrow was born on 31 May 1938 to Ukrainian Jewish immigrants who had settled in Providence, Rhode Island. He graduated from Cornell University with a degree in psychology in 1959. He began performing during his final year at Cornell, singing in response to lectures given by Harold Thompson in his “Romp-n-Stomp” classes.

More to follow…