9-12-09 We Shall Overcome

Karen - thank you - it's just crazy, crazy, crazy stuff we're hearing from your places right now. I've been bemoaning the loss of all my bookmarks and things with your other music clips. You never fail to bring out the best singers and songs. What a lineup! And nothing could be a more pertinent motivational song right now.

For now I can't even find my own blog! Took a while to locate this one.

Yeah its really a motivational song ever. Fans of the Steelers are probably depressed today, as a Troy Polamalu injury has been reported. A Troy Polamalu injury is bad news for the team, as the Pittsburgh Steelers are virtually defined as a team by their legendary and equally infamous smothering, spirit crushing, defense that makes quarterbacks and offensive coordinators cry and shake in their sleep. The Free Safety reportedly picked up an MCL sprain, or medial collateral ligament, part of the connective tissues of the knee. Polamalu is a defender in the tradition of other Pittsburgh, or Blitzburgh as their referred to, greats like "Mean" Joe Greene and Jack Lambert, the infamous linebacker who lived to hit people hard and was famously sans front teeth. A Troy Polamalu injury would be worth putting a cash advance towards curing quick.

September 17, 2009
Mary Travers of Peter, Paul and Mary Dies at 72
By WILLIAM GRIMES

Mary Travers, whose ringing, earnest vocals with the folk trio Peter, Paul and Mary made songs like “Blowin’ in the Wind,” “If I Had a Hammer” and “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?” enduring anthems of the 1960s protest movement, died on Wednesday at Danbury Hospital in Connecticut. She was 72 and lived in Redding, Conn.

The cause was complications from chemotherapy for a bone-marrow transplant she had several years ago after developing leukemia, said Heather Lylis, a spokeswoman.

Ms. Travers brought a powerful voice and an unfeigned urgency to music that resonated with mainstream listeners. With her straight blond hair and willowy figure and two bearded guitar players by her side, she looked exactly like what she was, a Greenwich Villager directly from the clubs and the coffeehouses that nourished the folk-music revival.

“She was obviously the sex appeal of that group, and that group was the sex appeal of the movement,” said Elijah Wald, a folk-blues musician and a historian of popular music.

Ms. Travers’s voice blended seamlessly with those of her colleagues, Peter Yarrow and Paul Stookey, to create a rich three-part harmony that propelled the group to the top of the pop charts. Their first album, “Peter, Paul and Mary,” which featured the hit singles “Lemon Tree” and “If I Had a Hammer,” reached No. 1 shortly after its release in March 1962 and stayed there for seven weeks, eventually selling more than two million copies.

The group’s interpretations of Bob Dylan’s “Blowin’ in the Wind” and “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right” translated his raw vocal style into a smooth, more commercially acceptable sound. The singers also scored big hits with pleasing songs like the whimsical “Puff the Magic Dragon” and John Denver’s plaintive “Leaving on a Jet Plane.”

Their sound may have been commercial and safe, but early on their politics were somewhat risky for a group courting a mass audience. Like Mr. Yarrow and Mr. Stookey, Ms. Travers was outspoken in her support for the civil-rights and antiwar movements, in sharp contrast to clean-cut folk groups like the Kingston Trio, which avoided making political statements.

Peter, Paul and Mary went on to perform at the 1963 March on Washington and joined the voting-rights marches from Selma to Montgomery, Ala., in 1965.

Over the years they performed frequently at political rallies and demonstrations in the United States and abroad. After the group disbanded, in 1970, Ms. Travers continued to perform at political events around the world as she pursued a solo career.

- more -

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/17/arts/music/17travers.html

RIP.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q8U6Oh9uSY8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1oU7M4OeSRM