Mary Allin Travers, 1936 - 2009
Born: 9 November 1936, Louisville, Kentucky
Died: 16 September 2009, Danbury, Connecticut
Travers' family moved to New York's Greenwich Village when she was two. She attended the Little Red School but was expelled in her junior year, then graduated from Elisabeth Irwin High School. While there she sang with the "Song Swappers", a group that recorded four albums with Pete Seeger in 1955. Albert Grossman, Peter Yarrow's manager, was looking to put together a group that would be an updated Weavers. After he met with Mary, she introduced Grossman and Yarrow to Noel Paul Stookey; Peter Paul and Mary was formed in 1961 and had a series of major folk hits including "Blowin' in the Wind", "If I Had a Hammer", and "Puff, the Magic Dragon". Grossman felt it would add to Mary's mysterious allure if she didn't speak on stage, so quotes are hard to find. The group broke up in 1970, with all three recording individually, but regrouped in 1978 and toured extensively until Travers was diagnosed with leukemia in September of 2004. She died from complications related to chemotherapy.
Biography from Wikipedia and New York Times obituary
Mary Travers quotes:
Quotes found : 22 — (15 per page, this is page 1 of 2) 1 2 Next
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- All of us are subject to being passive to the social ills around us. It's a struggle not to become, by staying silent, an accomplice.
- Each of us has a talent that's pivotal for the group. Peter is a patient and meticulous worker, especially when it comes to sound quality, and that commitment to excellence is what yields the best possible environment in which to be creative. Noel has a relaxed sensibility, and that's a very calming influence when it comes to adjusting to difficult situations, which happen all the time. Of course, both are talented songwriters as well. I think I bring a spontaneity, an ability to connect with them emotionally and focus our attention on having a musical conversation. I believe that if we can have that conversation, then the audience will feel included.
- Folk music has a sort of a bubbling-under quality. The stream runs through the cultural consciousness, and whether or not it's on the radio is not the issue. Folk music is always there.
- Folk music has always contained a concern for the human condition. And since it brings people into it from different points of view, that can help illuminate what a consensus might be to important issues.
- I was raised on Josh White, the Weavers and Pete Seeger. The music was everywhere. You'd go to a party at somebody's apartment and there would be fifty people there, singing well into the night.
- I was raised to believe that everybody has a responsibility to their community and I use the word very loosely. It's a big community. If I get recognized in the middle of the Sinai Desert I have a big community.
- If we are going to teach the world to stop hating the different, the other, then we're going to have to start with children.
- If you're serious about singing or acting, which are two art forms that get repetitive, the way to keep the music fresh is to recognize that it is totally impossible for it to ever be the same, night after night. You open your mouth and you'd like a certain sound to come out of it, but it doesn't always come out exactly like you thought it was going to come out!
- In our concerts, the audience feels a sense of community and continuity. Because folk music is non-ageist, it tends to bind families together. It's lovely to look out at the audience and see a parent hug their little boy or little girl during a song from their college years, and to see that the child knows the words. That sense of sharing feeds back to the artist, and it's one of the joys of having a long career. It's also why the music doesn't get old.
- It is one thing to read about the world, but quite another to see and hear for oneself.
- It was like a miracle. I'm just feeling fabulous. What's incredible is someone has given your life back. I'm out in the garden today. This time last year I was looking out a window at a hospital.
- Looking out at this quarter of a million people,... I truly believed, at that moment, it was possible that human beings could join together to make a positive social change.
- People say to us, 'Oh, I grew up with your music,' and we often say, sotto voce, 'So did we.'
- Protest is inherent to this system.
- Singing 'Blowin' in the Wind' all the places we've been, it takes on a different meaning everywhere. When you sing the line, 'How many years can a people exist, before they're allowed to be free?' in a prison yard for political prisoners in El Salvador; if you have sung it to a group of union organizers, who have all been in jail, in South Korea; if you've sung to Jews in the Soviet Union who have been refused exit visas; if you've sung it with Bishop Tutu protesting apartheid, the song breathes, it lives, it has a contemporary currency.
Quotes found : 22 — (15 per page, this is page 1 of 2) 1 2 Next
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