Mary Travers, who has died from the side effects of chemotherapy aged 72, was the essence of the freewheeling Greenwich Village bohemian — even if Peter, Paul And Mary's Puff The Magic Dragon may suggest otherwise. Singing protest songs with a strident glamour, a shock of blonde hair shaking to the sounds of righteousness as two bearded folkie types played guitar on either side of her, Travers was the ideal public face for New York's beatnik scene. Prettier than Bob Dylan, less hectoring than Joan Baez, she made the idea of sipping overpriced coffee in a downtown dive, while a guitar player sang songs of freedom seem like the greatest thing in the world.
Peter, Paul And Mary were easy to pillory - as director Christopher Guest did so well in his folk satire A Mighty Wind. Their huge success with versions of Blowin' in the Wind, If I Had a Hammer and, of course, Puff the Magic Dragon made the trio come across as a cleaned up, castrated version of the protest movement. Their manager Albert Grossman - also Dylan's - brought Travers together with Peter Yarrow and Paul Stookey as a folk supergroup in 1961, after spotting commercial potential in the resolutely non-commercial Village folk scene. But Travers had integrity and a political commitment that underpinned and guided her pop success.
Born in 1936, she was two when her parents moved from Kentucky to New York's Greenwich Village. By her teens Travers was a mainstay of the 50s Village folk music scene that centred on Sunday afternoon singalongs in Washington Square Park. When Peter, Paul And Mary performed If I Had A Hammer at Martin Luther King's 1963 march on Washington, it was indicative of how far the influence of that scene had stretched. While there may have been naivety in the trio's belief that they could change the world with good-natured protest songs and roll-neck jumpers, there was no cynicism behind it. From raising awareness of US support for a dictatorship in El Salvador, to campaigning for New York's homeless, Travers used her profile to champion frequently unpopular causes.
Peter, Paul And Mary continued to perform in spite of Travers dealing with the aftermath of chemotherapy and stem cell transplants to battle leukaemia, performing their final show in New Jersey on 20 May 2009. For Yarrow, Travers' great strength was her honesty. "That's the way she sang, too," he says; "honestly and with complete authenticity." It's a fitting tribute to a woman who showed how that most egotistic career move - pop stardom - can be used for the greater good.
