Peter Yarrow of Peter, Paul, and Mary Dead at 86
Peter Yarrow, the Peter of folk trio Peter, Paul, and Mary, died on January 7. He was 86. Yarrow died at home in Manhattan from bladder cancer, which he had for the past four years, the New York Times reports. Yarrow began performing in the downtown New York folk scene in the late 1950s after graduating from Cornell. He met his collaborator Mary Travers through those shows, who introduced him to Noel Paul Stookey, who went by his middle name Paul in their group. Peter, Paul, and Mary quickly became one of the most successful folk acts of the 1960s; their 1962 debut album went double platinum and their recording of “If I Had a Hammer” won two Grammys. Their performance of Bob Dylan’s early song “Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright” is credited with boosting Dylan’s early album The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan. Yarrow sang lead on the group’s most enduring hit, “Puff, the Magic Dragon,” adapted from a poem by his Cornell classmate Leonard Lipton. Like other folk groups of the era, Peter, Paul, and Mary were politically active, performing at the 1963 March on Washington and opposing the Vietnam War.
Peter, Paul, and Mary broke up in 1970, after nine albums. Like his bandmates, Yarrow intended to pursue a solo career, but he had pleaded guilty to sexually molesting a 14-year-old fan the year prior. He served three months of a one-to-three-year sentence in 1970, and was later pardoned by late president Jimmy Carter in 1981. The fan, Barbara Winter, later confirmed Yarrow had abused her on other instances, and in 2021, another woman sued Yarrow for allegedly raping her as a minor also in 1969.
Yarrow, meanwhile, released four solo albums in the early 1970s, before Peter, Paul, and Mary reunited in 1978. Travers died in 2009, making Stookey now the sole surviving member of the group.
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