PETER, PAUL & MARY
 Over the years, the
Bob Dylan song Blowin' In The Wind
would become the anthem of the civil rights movement and be
recorded by literally hundreds of artists. But it was Peter, Paul
and Mary who carried it to the world.
Led by the soulful Mary Travers, they had already put protest
music into the charts with a version of Pete
Seeger's If I Had
A Hammer, but they were able to balance their commercial
success with their espousal of worthy causes.
In August 1963 their performance of Blowin' In The Wind
to an army of black freedom marchers in Washington who had just
heard Martin Luther King deliver his "I have a dream"
speech was the high point of their career.
The group disbanded in 1970. In the same year, Peter Yarrow
pleaded guilty to "taking immoral liberties" with a
14-year-old girl. He was issued with a pardon by President Carter
eleven years later.
Mary Travers died on 16 September 2009, aged 72. Mary - who had
battled leukaemia for years - died at Danbury Hospital in
Connecticut.
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