Mary Travers (1936-2009)

Mary Travers, who died of complications from leukemia on September 16th at age 72, was best known as the visual focal point of folk icons Peter, Paul and Mary. With her fervent stage moves and long, straight blond hair, which she often shook to mesmerizing effect, Travers brought both powerful lungs and sex appeal to folk music.

Travers, who was diagnosed with leukemia in 2004, received a bone marrow transplant in 2006. But her condition worsened, and by earlier this year, she had stopped performing. A resident of Redding, Connecticut, Travers died at Danbury Hospital and is survived her husband, Ethan Robbins, and daughters Alicia and Erika.

Starting with their version of Pete Seeger's "If I Had a Hammer" in 1962 and continuing with hits like "Puff the Magic Dragon" (1963) and "Leaving on a Jet Plane" (1969), PPM were the face of folk-pop throughout the decade. Yet the trio used their caressing harmonies to subvert from within. They placed two Bob Dylan covers ("Blowin' in the Wind," "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right") in the top 10 in 1963. Paul Stookey's and Peter Yarrow's goatees, as well as a repertoire that included songs by Seeger, Woody Guthrie, Elizabeth Cotton, Tom Paxton, and the Rev. Gary Davis, brought the liberal Greenwich Village folk sound and look into the mainstream.

They carried on the folk-political continuum begun decades earlier with the Weavers — most notably in 1963, when PPM sang "If I Had a Hammer" and "Blowin' in the Wind" at the Lincoln Memorial during the same March on Washington at which Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. gave his "I Have a Dream" speech. "This was the first time I'd ever seen that many people, and they were all hoping for social change and for something good," Travers later recalled. "It was probably the most pivot al moment of my life."

As Stookey recalls, Travers was a major part of the group's stance. "As an activist, she was brave, outspoken and inspiring, especially in her defense of the defenseless," he says. "Once I was attempting to defend Ronald Reagan's educational policy. She interrupted me with, 'Oh, for heaven's sake, do your homework!,' turned on her heel and walked away. Need I say it turned out she was right?"

Travers was socially aware from the start. Born November 9, 1936 in Louisville, Kentucky, the child of two journalists, Travers eventually moved with her family first to Albany, New York, and then to Greenwich Village. There, Travers attended a progressive school and met legends like Seeger and Paul Robeson, heard Josh White at children's folk concerts, and during high school became a member of the Song Swappers folk group, who backed Seeger on record in the mid '50s.