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& MarySeptember 18, 2009 Mary Travers passed on Wednesday, the 16th. Another voice stilled, I thought, and then I thought, No, that voice, like so many other voices, is ringing in my memory, moving me forward, and will be till the day I die. My life has the most amazing soundtrack. Starting, more or less, with the Civil War songs I learned from my maternal grandmother (who belonged to the Daughters of the Confederacy as well as the DAR) and from the records of Tennessee Ernie Ford, moving on to the Beatles (the first LP I ever bought, age 13, was Introducing the Beatles) and all the glorious pop, rock, and political music of the mid and late 1960s, which could be heard, believe it or not, on AM radio. The Stones, the Beatles, the Airplane, Simon & Garfunkel . . . My family was nowhere close to musical, but I met Joan Baez, Tom Lehrer, and the Kingston Trio through my father's records. (I swiped his copy of Joan's first album when I left for college. I've still got it.) I'm nearly certain that I was listening to Peter, Paul & Mary while still in high school. "Blowin' in the Wind." "Puff, the Magic Dragon." "When the Ship Comes In." "Leaving on a Jet Plane" was a huge hit my freshman year at Georgetown U., and everybody got weepy singing along as they prepared to leave for Thanksgiving or Christmas with the family. It was less of a hit with me, though I liked it well enough. I liked political and poetic songs much more than sappy love songs. If it hadn't been for Peter, Paul & Mary, along with Joan Baez and the Byrds, I wouldn't have appreciated the genius of Bob Dylan's songwriting. I couldn't stand to listen to him sing. Can still barely tolerate his '60s voice. But the songs, the songs . . . ! Another thing about Mary Travers: her range was about the same as mine. I could sing along without going into falsetto or breaking in the middle. Altos rule! (Tu solus altissimus = "only you altos are great.") Sing along with Joan Baez? You jest. She's gone, but what a life. What a life, what a life! And only 14 years older than I am, which means she was only 14 years older than I when she sang in concerts and made recordings and generally helped inspire me to keep on keeping on. There's lots of wonderful stuff about Mary out there. Start with what her singing buddies Peter Yarrow and Noel Paul Stookey wrote. Then browse through the guestbook. Nothing is wasted. Carry it on.
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