October, 2009

When much younger, my sister's Peter, Paul & Mary records were the ones that jumped out at me from her disk collection that included Herman's Hermits, Freddie & the Dreamers, Paul Revere and the Raiders, Gary Lewis and the Playboys, Gene Pitney, Chad and Jeremy, Peter and Gordon, Gerry and the Pacemakers, the Turtles (well okay, they jumped out too), and others. The three voices and two guitars were musical manna from my first hearing, and my high school folk group "the Family Portrait" did many of their songs and absolutely modeled our sound after theirs

Fast forward to 2004 when the group stopped touring as Mary underwent a bone marrow transplant for her leukemia...the hiatus lasted 13 months and their hungry, hungry audience of adoring fans quickly sold out Carnegie Hall in December of 2005 for their first show in over a year

I got a ticket and took the 5-hour bus ride from Cape Cod through an ice storm to attend with my buddy Paul Kehoe, an elementary school teacher on the Cape who has been working with PPM for years and helping Mary write her autobiography. The New York City Chorale was on stage backing them up, as was their longtime bass player Dick Kniss (who earned the down payment on his house in Saugerties, NY by suggesting a chord progression to John Denver for the latter’s song “Sunshine on My Shoulders). When they walked on stage to a standing ovation that lasted at least five minutes, out came Mary on a cane in a full length tie-dye silk dress...not a dry eye in the house, and the ensuing two hours of music was everything we could have hoped for - timeless, soaring, and in our DNA.

Afterwards Paul Kehoe I had the great privilege to join each member of the group at their separate "receptions" in various parts of Manhattan - Mary at her hotel, Noel Paul at a diner on the Upper West Side, and finally arriving at Peter's apartment around 4 AM (Senator John Kerry had just left) with things still in full swing still...a quintessential New York City night, one I'll never forget with people who absolutely shaped the clay from which I'm made.  

Godspeed, Mary.

david