Peter, Paul and Mary were a United States folk-singing trio whose nearly 50-year career began with their rise to become a paradigm for 1960s folk music. The trio was composed of folk song writer Peter Yarrow, (Noel) Paul Stookey and Mary Travers. After the death of Mary Travers in 2009, Yarrow and Stookey continued to perform as a duo under their individual names. (More from Wikipedia)
Songwriting credits were not handled so scrupulously back then anyway, and those practices continued at least through the end of the 1960’s.
On the first LP by Peter, Paul and Mary, Peter, Paul and Mary (1962) – one of the few folk music albums to reach Number One on the Billboard album charts – Peter Yarrow is shown as the writer of “This Train” (this gospel song dates back at least as far as 1927 and had been a hit in the 1930’s for Sister Rosetta Tharpe); Yarrow and Paul Stookey are said to have written “Sorrow” (better known by its full name “Man of Constant Sorrow” or “Maid of Constant Sorrow” and dating from 1913, both Bob Dylan and Judy Collins recorded it in the same time period, and “Man of Constant Sorrow” was also prominently featured in the 2000 film O Brother Where Art Thou); and “If I Had My Way” shows a songwriter of Rev. Gary Davis (earlier versions of this traditional song exist under the probable original name “Samson and Delilah”, “If I Had My Way I’d Tear the Building Down” and “Oh Lord If I Had My Way”, the latter by Blind Willie Johnson from 1927).
(February 2015)
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Items: Peter, Paul and Mary
