Sing it in the Morning: A 10-Year-Old's Goodbye to Mary Travers

Mary Travers of the legendary folk trio Peter, Paul & Mary died Wednesday night at the age of 72.

For my 10th birthday, my dad bought me a teal plastic cassette tape box and put two new cassettes in it: The Beach Boys' Endless Summer and Peter, Paul & Mary's Ten Years Together. The next year, I'd add a third album to the collection—Hootie & the Blowfish's Cracked Rear View, what a classic!—but for a while, those first two comprised the entirety of my record collection. Dreamy 60s pop and protest songs. I promptly decorated the case with Lisa Frank kitten stickers but moved on to CDs before I could fill it all the way up.

I was young enough then to be completely unaware of the psychedelic undertones (overtones?) of "Puff the Magic Dragon," the one song that you might think would most appeal to a pre-adolescent girl, but the lyrics made me sad so it wasn't my favorite. It was probably "If I Had A Hammer" or "Leaving on a Jetplane," and it was probably just because of Mary Travers' voice. Peter and Paul's voices were always and still are mostly indistinguishable to me, but hers was big and fierce and strong and it rang like a bell—a righteous, blonde, bangs-flipping bell.

(Years later it would be "Stewball" that really slew me, where she's just singing harmonies—and by God if that isn't the most wonderful song about an alcoholic race-horse I've ever heard.)

It's pretty funny for me, now, to think about my dad giving me those two particular tapes. The Beach Boys one I understand, I guess, because my family listened pretty much exclusively to the local oldies station and I knew the band's music from that, but I don't have much of a memory Peter, Paul & Mary before that birthday. The music was just given to me, pushed into my hands by my dad, who must have known better what it would eventually mean to me than I did when I first pulled the cassette it out of that teal case and just held it in my hands, staring at the big 10 adorned with the flowers and the moon and the butterflies, not knowing quite what to make of it. I didn't know about Bob Dylan or folk music or anything at all, really. Ten Years Together—just like me. It all started right there.

But I'm sure my befuddlement was nothing compared to that of my fourth grade music teacher when I brought that tape to my class' always-much-anticipated Music Share Day, me sandwiching "Leaving on a Jetplane" in between cuts from The Lion King soundtrack and TLC's "Waterfalls."

So thank you, Mary Travers, for your contribution to that strange and wonderful cultural experience, and for everything else.