Early life and education
She was born in Louisville, Kentucky, to Robert Travers and Virginia Coigney, both of whom were journalists and were active organizers for The Newspaper Guild, a trade union. In 1938, the family moved to Greenwich Village in
Singing career
Main article: Peter, Paul & Mary
While in high school, she joined The Song Swappers, which sang backup for Pete Seeger when Folkways Records reissued a union song collection, Talking Union, in 1955. The Song Swappers recorded a total of four albums for Folkways in 1955, all with Seeger. Travers had regarded her singing as a hobby and was shy about it, but was encouraged by fellow musicians. Travers also was in the cast of the Broadway-theatre show, The Next President.
The group Peter, Paul and Mary was formed in 1961, and they were an immediate success. They shared a manager, Albert Grossman, with Bob Dylan and so were able to make Dylan’s songs appreciated by people who had hitherto been put off by his nasal whine. Their success with Dylan’s Don’t Think Twice Its Alright aided Dylan’s Freewheelin’ album into the Top 30. (It had been released four months earlier.) An
Their next album, Moving, included the hit tale of innocence lost, Puff (The Magic Dragon), which reached No. 2 on the charts and generated since-discounted reports that it was an ode to marijuana.
The trio’s third album, In the Wind, featured three songs by the 22-year-old Bob Dylan. Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right and Blowin’ in the Wind reached the top 10, bringing Dylan’s material to a massive audience; the latter shipped 300,000 copies during one two-week period.
…at one point in 1963, three of their albums were in the top six Billboard best-selling LPs as they became the biggest stars of the folk revival movement.
Their version of If I Had a Hammer became an anthem for racial equality, as did Bob Dylan’s Blowin’ in the Wind, which they performed at the August 1963 March on Washington. Puff, the Magic Dragon is so well-known that it has entered American and
The group broke up in 1970, and Travers subsequently pursued a solo career and recorded five albums, “Mary” (1971), “Morning Glory” (1972), “All My Choices” (1973), “Circles” (1974) and “It’s in Everyone of Us” (1978). The group re-formed in 1978, toured extensively and issued many new albums. The group was inducted into the Vocal Group
Personal life and death
Travers’s first three marriages [1. ? (m. 1958-1960), 2. Barry Feinstein (m. 1963-1968), 3. Gerald Taylor (m. 1969-1975)] ended in divorce. She is survived by her fourth husband, restaurateur Ethan Robbins (married 1991), two daughters, Erika Marshall (born 1960) of Naples FL, and Alicia Travers (born 1965) of Greenwich CT; half-brother John Travers; a sister, Ann Gordon, Ph.D. of Oakland CA, and two grandchildren, Wylie and Virginia. Travers lived in Redding, Connecticut.
In 2005, Travers was diagnosed with leukemia. Although a bone-marrow transplant was apparently successful in beating the disease, Travers died on September 16, 2009, at Danbury Hospital in Danbury, Connecticut, from complications arising from chemotherapy. She was 72 years old.
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