Peter Yarrow is an American singer and
songwriter who found fame with the 1960s
folk music trio Peter, Paul and Mary.
Yarrow co-wrote one of the group's
greatest hits, "Puff, the Magic Dragon".
He is also a political activist and has
lent his support to causes that range
from opposition to the Vietnam War to
the creation of Operation Respect, an
organization that promotes tolerance and
civility in schools.
Early life
Peter Yarrow was born in Manhattan, the
son of Vera Yarrow Wisebrode and Bernard
Yarrow. His parents were both immigrants
of educated Ukrainian Jewish background,
whose families had settled in
Providence, Rhode Island. Bernard
attended the University of Cracow,
Poland, and the University of Odessa,
Ukraine, before emigrating to the United
States in 1922 at the age of 23. Bernard
anglicized his surname from Yaroshevitz
to Yarrow, obtained a Bachelor of
Science degree from Columbia University
in 1925, and in 1928 graduated from
Columbia Law School. He then maintained
a private law practice in New York City
until 1938, when he was appointed an
assistant district attorney under then
Governor Elect Thomas E. Dewey. In 1944
Bernard Yarrow was recruited into the
OSS, where he served with distinction.
After the war he joined Sullivan and
Cromwell, the Dulles brothers' law firm.
He was a founding board member of the
National Committee for a Free Europe, an
anti-Communist organization. In 1952 he
became a senior vice-president of the
CIA-funded Radio Free Europe, an
organization he helped to found.
Yarrow's mother Vera, who had come to
America at age three, became a speech
and drama teacher at New York's Julia
Richman High School for girls. She and
Bernard divorced in 1943 when their son
Peter was five, and Vera subsequently
married Harold Wisebrode, the executive
director of Central Synagogue in
Manhattan. Bernard Yarrow married his
wartime London OSS partner Silvia Tim
and converted to Protestantism.
Peter Yarrow graduated second in his
class among male students with a physics
prize from New York's High School of
Music and Art, where he had studied
painting. He was accepted at Cornell
University as a physics major but soon
switched majors, graduating with a
Bachelor of Arts in psychology in 1959.
Among his Cornell classmates were Thomas
Pynchon and Richard Fariña.
Music and career
Yarrow began singing in public during
his last year at Cornell while
participating in Professor Harold
Thompson's popular American Folk
Literature course, colloquially known on
campus as "Romp-n-Stomp." The course was
"a highlight of late-1950s student life
at Cornell", Yarrow reminisced, and the
ability to sing and play guitar was a
prerequisite for enrollment. Thompson
would lecture on a topic for twenty or
thirty minutes and afterwards a student
would sing songs related to his theme.
The experience of performing in front of
a large audience was a thrilling one for
Yarrow, who discovered he loved it. He
branched out to lead community sings on
weekends.
Upon graduation he played in folk clubs
in New York City, appeared on the CBS
television show, Folk Sound USA, and the
following summer performed at the
Newport Folk Festival, where he met
manager and musical impresario Grossman.
One day, the two were at Israel Young's
Folklore Center in Greenwich Village
discussing Grossman's idea for a new
group that would be "an updated version
of the Weavers for the baby-boom
generation ... with the crossover appeal
of the Kingston Trio". Yarrow noticed a
picture of Mary Travers on the wall and
asked Mr. Grossman who she was. “That’s
Mary Travers,” Grossman said. “She’d be
good if you could get her to work." The
lanky, blonde Kentucky-born Travers was
well connected in Greenwich Village folk
song circles. While still a high-school
student at the progressive Elizabeth
Irwin High School she had been picked
out by Elizabeth Irwin's chorus leader
Robert De Cormier to sing in a trio
called The Song Swappers, backing up
Pete Seeger in the 1955 Folkways LP
reissue of the Almanac Singers' The
Talking Union and two other albums. As
well as performing twice with Seeger at
Carnegie Hall, Travers had also played a
folksinger in a short-lived Broadway
play called The Next President, starring
satirist Mort Sahl, but she was known to
be painfully introverted and loath to
sing professionally. To draw her out,
"Mr. Yarrow went to Ms. Travers's
apartment on Macdougal Street, across
from the Gaslight, one of the principal
folk clubs. They harmonized on 'Miner's
Lifeguard', a union song, and decided
that their voices blended. To fill out
the trio, Ms. Travers suggested Noel
Stookey, a friend doing folk music and
stand-up comedy at the Gaslight." They
chose the catchy "Peter, Paul and Mary"
as the name for their group, since Noel
Stookey's middle name was Paul, and
rehearsed intensively for six months,
touring outside New York before debuting
in 1961 as a polished act at The Bitter
End nightclub in Greenwich Village.
There the singers quickly developed a
following and signed a contract with
Warner Brothers.
Warner released "Lemon Tree" as a single
in early 1962, then followed with the
trio's version of "If I Had a Hammer",
written in 1949 by Pete Seeger and Lee
Hays to protest the imprisonment of
Harlem City Councilman Benjamin J.
Davis, Jr. under the Smith Act. "If I
had a Hammer" garnered two Grammy Awards
in 1962. The trio's first album, the
eponymous Peter, Paul & Mary remained in
the Top Ten for ten months, in the Top
Twenty for two years and sold more than
two million copies. The group toured
extensively and recorded numerous
albums, both live and in the studio. In
June 1963 they released a 7" single of
"Blowin' in the Wind" by the then
relatively unknown, Bob Dylan, also
managed by Grossman. "Blowin' in the
Wind" sold a phenomenal three hundred
thousand copies in the first week of
release and by August 17 was number two
on the Billboard pop chart, with sales
exceeding one million copies. Yarrow
recalled that when he told Dylan he
would make more than $5,000 from the
publishing rights, Dylan was speechless.
On August 28, 1963, Peter, Paul and Mary
appeared on stage with the Reverend
Martin Luther King at his historic March
on Washington where their performance of
"Blowin' in the Wind" established it as
a civil rights anthem. Their version
also spent weeks on Billboard‍ '​s easy
listening chart. By 1964 the 26-year-old
Yarrow had joined the Board of the
Newport Folk Festival, where he had
performed as an unknown just four years
earlier.
Yarrow's songwriting helped to create
some of Peter, Paul and Mary's
best-known songs, including "Puff, the
Magic Dragon", "Day is Done," "Light One
Candle", and "The Great Mandala". As a
member of that folk music trio, he
earned a 1996 Emmy nomination for the
Great Performances special LifeLines
Live, a highly acclaimed celebration of
folk music, with their musical mentors,
contemporaries, and a new generation of
singer/songwriters.
Yarrow was instrumental in founding the
New Folks Concert series at both the
Newport Folk Festival and the Kerrville
Folk Festival. His work at Kerrville has
been called his "most important
achievement in this arena."
He co-wrote "Torn Between Two Lovers", a
number one hit for Mary McGregor. He
also produced three CBS TV specials
based on "Puff, the Magic Dragon", which
earned an Emmy nomination for him. In
1978 Yarrow organized Survival Sunday,
an antinuclear benefit, and after a
period of separation, he was once again
joined by Stookey and Travers..
Yarrow and his daughter Bethany Yarrow,
who is also a musician, often perform
together. Together with cellist Rufus
Cappadocia, they form the trio Peter,
Bethany, and Rufus. They released the CD
Puff & Other Family Classics. In Spring
2008, the musical special Peter, Bethany
& Rufus: Spirit of Woodstock, featuring
a live performance of the band, aired on
public television.
Yarrow portrayed leftist intellectual
Ira Mandelstam in the 2015 film While
We're Young.
Social activism
Yarrow has long been an activist for
social and political causes. What he did
was not always popular. According to The
New York Times:
As their fame grew, Peter, Paul and Mary
mixed music with political and social
activism. In 1963, the trio marched with
Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King in Selma,
Alabama, and Washington, D.C.. The three
participated in countless demonstrations
against the war in Vietnam. They sang at
the 1969 March on Washington, which Mr.
Yarrow helped to organize. Though their
activism provoked a steady stream of
death threats, they were never harmed.
"But for years, I used to bite my
fingernails on stage," [Mary] Travers
says. "There you are and look like the
back porch light, and stare out at
12,000 or 15,000 people. Any one of whom
could have had a gun."
= Operation Respect=
In 2000, in an effort to combat school
bullying, Yarrow helped start Operation
Respect, a nonprofit organization that
brings to children, in schools and
camps, a curriculum of tolerance and
respect for each other's differences.
The project began as a result of Yarrow
and his daughter Bethany and his son
Christopher having heard the song Don't
Laugh At Me at the Kerrville Folk
Festival. Operation Respect later quoted
Yarrow as saying:
Since I have lived a life of social and
political advocacy through music, one in
which I had seen songs like "Blowin' In
the Wind," "If I Had a Hammer," and "We
Shall Overcome" become anthems that
moved generations and helped solidify
their commitment to efforts like the
Civil Rights Movement and the Peace
Movement, I knew I had just discovered a
song that could become an anthem of a
movement to help children find their
common sensitivity to the painful
effects of disrespect, intolerance,
ridicule and bullying."
Operation Respect's stated mission reads
as follows: "To [ensure] each child and
youth a respectful, safe, and
compassionate climate of learning where
their academic, social, and emotional
development can take place free of
bullying, ridicule, and violence."
On behalf of Operation Respect, Yarrow
has appeared, pro bono, in areas as
diverse as Hong Kong, Vietnam, Bermuda,
Croatia, South Africa, Egypt, Argentina,
and Canada. In all, the program has been
presented to many educational leaders
and more than 10 million children. In
some form, the project has reached
nearly one third of all elementary and
middle schools in America—at least
20,000 schools, in all.
The DLAM Programs
Operation Respect developed the Don't
Laugh at Me programs, one for grades 2
through 5, another for grades 6 through
8 and a third for summer camps and
after-school programs. These programs
make use of music and video along with
curriculum guides based on highly
regarded conflict resolution curricula
developed by the Resolving Conflict
Creatively Program of Educators for
Social Responsibility. Because of the
generosity of its supporters, Operation
Respect is able to disseminate the DLAM
programs free of charge. More than
145,000 copies of the curriculum have
been distributed to educators since
Operation Respect began. Operation
Respect also offers assembly programs
and professional development workshops
designed to provide educators with the
tools for effective implementation.
In March 2008, Yarrow told Reuters:
Operation Respect has been my main and
all-consuming work for the past 10
years. My perception is that the kind of
bullying, humiliation that goes on in
children's schools leads to high rates
of depression that was virtually unknown
when I was young and the high suicide
rate of teenagers which we know is
almost inevitably caused by bullying or
mean-spiritedness. It is a reflection of
the role models that young people
observe on TV shows like a lot of the
reality shows. It is also part and
parcel of the characteristics in the
adult world of America.
= Other activism=
Yarrow produced and coordinated many
events as a part of the anti–Vietnam War
movement, including the winter and
summer Festival for Peace at Madison
Square Garden and Shea Stadium,
respectively. These events raised funds
for antiwar political candidates and
featured dozens of folk, rock, jazz, and
blues stars such as Jimi Hendrix, Janis
Joplin, Paul Simon, Miles Davis, Tom
Paxton, Creedence Clearwater Revival,
and Steppenwolf. They were the first
major concerts at such venues designed
solely for such a purpose. The 1969
antiwar March on Washington, AKA The
National Mobilization to End the War, in
which some half-million people
participated, was the largest of these
efforts.
Yarrow's involvement in politics
continued throughout the decades. He has
also had a variety of contacts with
politicians; he performed at John
Kerry's wedding.
His leadership in the campaign to free
Soviet Jewry inspired another
generation. Of the song "Light One
Candle", Rabbi Allison Bergman Vann has
written:
Peter Yarrow's now famous song, which
was written in 1983, became a defining
song for my generation of high school
and college students to become
activists, to make the world a better
place.
I heard Peter Yarrow singing that song
on the steps of the Capitol, in 1987,
twenty years ago next week, during the
march to free Soviet Jews. Listening to
him sing, surrounded by literally
thousands of like-minded individuals, I
learned of my obligation to change the
world; to engage in tikkun olam, repair
of our broken world. And, during that
incredible day, I knew that we could,
indeed, change the world.
In 2005, Yarrow performed in Ho Chi Minh
City at a concert to benefit the Vietnam
Association of Victims of Agent Orange;
Yarrow pleaded with the Vietnamese for
forgiveness of the United States.
Yarrow serves on the board of directors
of the Connecticut Hospice.
In August 2006, he met with
representatives of 35 organizations,
including the League of Cities, the
Academy of Education, Americans for the
Arts, and Newspapers in Education, to
unite them in a commitment to "shifting
the American educational paradigm, to
educating the whole child; not just in
academics but in character, heart,
social–emotional development. As we Jews
say, 'let him be a mensch first;
everything else will work out.'"
On November 1, 2008, Yarrow performed
across New York City for volunteers who
worked for the presidential campaign of
Senator Barack Obama.
On October 3, 2011, Yarrow, his son, and
his daughter made an appearance at
Zuccotti Park during the Occupy Wall
Street protests, playing songs such as
"We Shall Not Be Moved" and a variation
of "Puff the Magic Dragon".
Personal life
Yarrow has cited Judaism as one of the
roots of his liberal views.
While campaigning for 1968 presidential
candidate Eugene McCarthy, Yarrow met
McCarthy's niece, Mary Beth McCarthy, in
Wisconsin. They were married in October
1969 in Willmar, Minnesota. Paul Stookey
wrote "Wedding Song" as his gift for
their wedding and first performed it at
St. Mary's Church in Willmar. They had
two children, but later divorced.
In 1970 Yarrow was convicted of, and
served three months in prison for,
taking "improper liberties" with a
14-year-old girl who went with her
17-year-old sister to Yarrow's hotel
room seeking an autograph. He has since
apologized for the incident: "It was an
era of real indiscretion and mistakes by
categorically male performers. I was one
of them. I got nailed. I was wrong. I'm
sorry for it."
In 1981 Jimmy Carter granted Yarrow a
presidential pardon for the crime.
Nonetheless, it has occasionally become
a campaign issue for politicians he
supports. In 2004, Representative Martin
Frost of Texas, a Democrat, canceled a
fundraising appearance with the singer
after his opponent ran a radio
advertisement about Yarrow's offense; in
2013 Republican politicians called on
Democratic Congressional candidate
Martha Robertson to cancel a scheduled
fundraiser with Yarrow.
In December 2000, Yarrow's Larrivee
acoustic guitar was stolen on an
airplane flight. In early 2005, fans
spotted the guitar on eBay. The Federal
Bureau of Investigation recovered it in
Sunny Isles Beach, Florida and returned
it to Yarrow. He did not press charges,
as the person it was recovered from had
not stolen it.
Yarrow performed the world premiere of
"The Colonoscopy Song" on the CBS early
morning program The Early Show on March
9, 2010.
Yarrow has also acknowledged being an
alcoholic, and sought treatment for the
disease. He considers himself in
recovery.
Yarrow is a longtime resident of
Telluride, Colorado. Yarrow's son,
Christopher, is a visual artist who owns
The Monkey & The Rat emporium in
Portland, Oregon.
Awards and honors
Yarrow received the Allard K. Lowenstein
Award in 1982 for his "remarkable
efforts in advancing the causes of human
rights, peace, and freedom." In 1995 the
Miami Jewish Federation recognized
Yarrow's continual efforts by awarding
its Tikkun Olam Award for his part in
helping to "repair the world."
In 2003 a congressional resolution
recognized Yarrow's achievements and
those of Operation Respect. The
Congressional Caucus gave him a standing
ovation.
Discography
= Peter, Paul and Mary=
See Peter, Paul and Mary#Discography
= Solo=
1972 Peter US #163
1973 That's Enough For Me US #203
1975 Hard Times
1975 Love Song
= Peter, Bethany and Rufus=
2008 Puff & Other Family Classics
Bibliography
Puff, the Magic Dragon, by Peter Yarrow,
Lenny Lipton, Eric Puybaret, Sterling
Publishing, released in August 2007,
ISBN 978-1-4027-4782-3
The Peter Yarrow Songbook: Favorite Folk
Songs, by Peter Yarrow, Terry Widener,
Sterling Publishing, released November
4, 2008, ISBN 978-1-4027-5961-1
The Peter Yarrow Songbook: Sleepytime
Songs, by Peter Yarrow, Terry Widener,
Sterling Publishing, released November
4, 2008, ISBN 978-1-4027-5962-8
Day Is Done, by Peter Yarrow, Melissa
Sweet, Sterling Publishing, released
October 2009, ISBN 978-1-4027-4806-6
The Peter Yarrow Songbook: Songs for
Little Folks, by Peter Yarrow, Terry
Widener, Sterling Publishing, released
May 2010, ISBN 978-1-4027-5964-2
See also
List of peace activists
List of people pardoned or granted
clemency by a United States president
References
External links
Official website
