Album Reviews

Peter, Paul and Mary brought gospel fervor to the staid folk revival of the early '60s. Though they got their live chops at Paul Colby's Bitter End, the brick wall of which serves as the cover's backdrop, it was this album that propelled them to pop music-like mainstream stardom.

The trio's looks were perfect: two clean cut "Beatniks" and a blonde bombshell but it was the sound that took the country and world by storm. Peter Yarrow was the sincere, professorial one, Paul Stookey the intense, flinty one leavened by sly humor and there was something about Mary. She looked great and her pure, almost razor sharp voice cut through yet blended ideally with the men. The guys were also warm-toned strummers.

None of this was accidental. The group was created by Albert Grossman, who also managed Dylan, The Band and Janis Joplin among others. He auditioned a wide range of characters including the too idiosyncratic Dave Van Ronk among others. Grossman was looking for and got "clean cut" and wholesome, which ultimately made the trio all the more subversive as they "niced" their way into middle America's conscience.

Despite their clean cut looks—guys in ties and jackets on the cover—PP&M were active in the civil rights movement and other agents of change during the turbulent '60s and beyond.

This debut produced by Grossman was an instant sensation, remaining atop the Billboard charts for seven weeks and selling a few million copies. PP&M made the then reigning folk trio, The Kingston Trio, sound cool, distant and low energy by comparison, their harmonies bland and indistinct.

This was emphasized by the daring, almost astonishing recording of this album by engineer Bill Schwartau, who put the three right up against the microphones not afraid of a popped consonant or three. Whether this was the engineer's idea or Grossman's no one is sure but the result was electrifying especially for those with stereos and doubly especially for Kingston Trio fans who'd become used to distantly miked, reverberant recordings that placed the three singers in the "phantom center channel." Here Peter had the left channel to himself, Paul the right and Mary the center on most tracks, producing a sensational immediacy and intimacy especially because Schwartau used but a "kiss" of reverb.

All these years later when Paul Stookey sings "Gone to graveyards every one" it still produces chills as do so many other moments on this still compelling but short (33 minutes and change) album. The original's sides one and two begin with rousers ("Early in the Morning" and "If I Had My Way") and in between are a series of protest songs, some familiar like "If I Had a Hammer" (especially to socialist summer campers whose administrations did not ban Weavers or Pete Seeger songs). The album has the calypso "Lemon Tree" later adapter as the "Lemon Pledge" song, and of course the anti-war classic "Where Have All the Flowers Gone." The only clunker then and now is the treacly children's song "It's Raining", but I'm sure some people like it.

Travers passed away in 2009 at age 72, having lost her stellar looks years earlier, while the gray "beatniks" still perform and are often still seen on PBS. They've lost none of their charm and their voices are still pretty supple.

At the time Warner Brothers was a minor league label and how the group got signed there and not to one of the majors like RCA or Columbia remains a mystery. I have over a half-dozen gold label Warner Brothers "originals" (a few are verifiable "first pressings" a few later ones) that vary sonically but all sound very good and are well pressed.

None sound as good as this reissue, starting with RTI's black backdrops. So much more low level detail gets revealed, especially the two acoustic guitars in the left and right channels. Mary's voice is better focused in the center and she's far more clearly rendered in three-dimensional space.

Bernie Grundman cut from the original master tape and the transparency and clarity are a dead giveaway to that. If this album doesn't produce occasional chills, your system needs some work or you do!

A long awaited reissue (for aging folkies at least) done perfectly! Listening to it now makes clear that John Philips and probably the other members of The Mamas & the Papas were listening though that's not surprising. So was most of the rest of the world.

On their third album In the Wind (also reissued by ORG and to soon be reviewed here) they brought Bob Dylan to the attention of "the mainstream" scoring a big hit with a smoothed over "Blowin' In the Wind". Later they scored with John Denver's "Leaving on the Jet Plane" and of course the subversive song that secretly advised young children to smoke pot "Puff the Magic Dragon" (the latter interpretation courtesy crazy conservatives at the time and anti-drug zealots. In reality it was about a dragon named Puff and a kid whose last name was Paper and whose middle name was not Zig-Zag!)