Peter, Paul And Mary

The brainchild of Bob Dylan's manager Albert Grossman, Peter Yarrow, Paul Stookey and Mary Travers were plucked from New York City's Greenwich Village coffee house scene with the intention of creating a polished-up, pop friendly group to take the folk music craze of the early 1960s into the charts. And they did exactly that, their gently acoustic harmonies scoring US Top 10 hits with Puff (The Magic Dragon), I Dig Rock & Roll and the Bob Dylan covers Blowin' In The Wind and Don't Think Twice, It's Alright. They spent seven weeks at Number 1 with their debut album Peter, Paul And Mary (1962), played at the March on Washington before Martin Luther King's "I Have A Dream" speech and became one of the biggest folk groups of the era with their million-selling Number 1 single Leaving On A Jet Plane, written by John Denver. After splitting in 1970 to pursue solo careers, the trio reformed in 1978 and continued until 2009 when Mary Travers died from leukaemia.