Podcasts about stookey

We're thrilled to welcome Noel Paul Stookey, legendary musician and social activist best known as part of the iconic folk trio Peter, Paul, and Mary—creators of such classic songs like “If I Had a Hammer,” “Blowin' in the Wind,” and “Puff the Magic Dragon.” For over six decades, Stookey has stood as a beacon of resilience and optimism, using his music and his philosophy of “Big Love” to inspire hope and unity. Chapters 00:00 – Intro and Welcome 02:50 – Reflections on Goodness and Influence 05:08 – The 1963 March and Music's Social Power 10:28 – Is Folk Music Evolving? 13:34 – Revolution and Making Change One by One 16:54 – Serendipity and Connection 18:50 – Music to Life: Social Change Through Music 23:15 – Concerts and Community 30:07 – Break 32:23 – The Dimpled White Orb 35:00 – Big Love and Compassionate Connection 42:40 – Encouraging Optimism and Avoiding Blame 50:40 – Fear vs. Hate in a Divisive World 55:15 – Final Remarks 57:00 – Closing

We all know that water is essential, but simply drinking any water isn't enough. The quality, quantity, and the way we consume water all play crucial roles in our health. Join me in this episode of The Darin Olien Show as I discuss water's purity, temperature, mineral content, and even its structure within foods to help you understand the dimensions of water that can make a significant difference in your health.   I dive into how water quality directly impacts cognitive function, metabolic processes, and disease prevention and why even mild dehydration can impair mental performance and contribute to health issues like kidney stones and urinary tract infections. I also discuss the importance of avoiding contaminants and pollutants in your drinking water, advocating for purified or filtered water as a key component of a healthy lifestyle.    Don't forget… You can order now by heading to https://darinolien.com/fatal-conveniences-book or order now on Amazon.   Thank you to our sponsors: Therasage: Go to www.therasage.com and use code DARIN at checkout for 15% off   Find more from Darin: Website: https://darinolien.com/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/Darinolien/ Book: https://darinolien.com/fatal-conveniences-book/ Down to Earth: https://darinolien.com/down-to-earth/      Links Mentioned:  Redmond Salt https://darinolien.com/product/redmond-salt/  AquaTru https://darinolien.com/product/aquatru/ Blue Bottle Love https://darinolien.com/product/blue-bottle-love/  Fountain of Life https://darinolien.com/product/fountain-of-life-water-bottles-lifewater-systems/ Manna Vitality https://darinolien.com/product/manna-vitality/    Resources:  Popkin et al., 2010 Horswill & Janas, 2011 Wenhold & Faber, 2009 Li & Wu, 2019 Goulet et al., 2017 Shirreffs & Sawka, 2011 Lindinger, 2020 Chycki et al., 2018) Stookey et al., 2008 Muckelbauer et al., 2013  

One of the most famous homes in Palm Springs is the Kaufmann House, designed by Richard Neutra.  It was recently the star of Don't Worry Darling, filmed right before it sold, and there's a rich history there.  Even Barry Manilow owned it at one point!  Adele Cygelman is the author of Palm Springs Modern and Arthur Elrod: Desert Modern Design. Her recent research focused on Edgar Kaufmann's first wife, Liliane, and his second, a woman who, um, assumed hostessing duties after Liliane retreated back to Pittsburgh. Cathy Whitlock is a film journalist and author of Designs on Film: A Century of Hollywood Art Direction. Chris Baugh is a film location manager who secured the Kaufmann house for the movie. Later on, from our studios, a legend in folk music, someone who was actually there at the Lincoln Memorial for Martin Luther King Jr.'s iconic speech, musician Noel Paul Stookey of Peter Paul and Mary.

Portland singer/songwriter Shireen Amini is one of 16 musicians around the country featured on a new collaborative album called "Hope Rises II." The compilation is produced by Noel ‘Paul' Stookey, of Peter, Paul and Mary and is a celebration of “New Voices of Social Change.” Amini's track, "Break Myself Free," explores what it means to be authentically yourself without any constraints. Her independently produced single “What I Am” explores her non-binary identity. Amini also regularly performs with the all-Latin band she formed in Bend called ¡Chiringa!, which means "kite" in Puerto Rican-style Spanish. She also runs community song circles as part of what she calls "music medicine." She joins us in studio to tell us more and play some of her songs.

Dr. Joe Stookey, professor emeritus from the Western College of Veterinary Medicine joins the podcast this week.  Joe has spent his career researching various aspects of animal behavior with a focus on beef cattle.  He joins me to discuss the problem of mis-mothering in calving cows.  It can be a frustrating situation and Joe gives some practical tips on how to deal with these situations.  Just a quick heads up, there were some technical difficulties in recording this episode and there are a couple of segments in the podcast where the sound quality is not great for my microphone.  Hopefully you can get the gist of the conversation, but apologies for the segments where the sound isn't great.00:00 – 02:32 Introduction02:33 – 3:37 How common is mis-mothering in cows and heifers?03:38 – 06:28 How does the maternal bond form?06:29 - 10:22 Risk Factors for mis-mothering10:23 – 13:40 How does calf behavior contribute to maternal behavior?13:41 – 15:32 Dealing with cows that claim calves from other cows15:33 – 17:07 Genetic inheritance of maternal behavior17:36 – 21:25 Cross-fostering calves21:26 – 23:05 Minimizing mis-mothering behavior23:06 – 24:00 Closing comments

Grace and peace to you. I'm Rev. Joe Cailles, the pastor of Peakland United Methodist Church in Lynchburg Virginia. Welcome to Wisdom Wednesdays. I'll be posting videos each Wednesday, sharing church news, discussing our church book studies or, like I'm doing today, offering a devotion. I've shared before in these vides passages and prayers from my favorite devotion book: This Day a Wesleyan Way of prayer. Today's devotion focuses on the church. Here these words from the New Testament book of Hebrews, chapter 10, verse 24-25: Let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds. Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another. Rev. Larry Stookey, the author of this book writes: As it takes an entire village to raise a child, so also it takes an entire congregation to nurture a Christian God has created us in an interlocking system of relationships, apart from which we cannot flourish. The church is a gift from God in order that we may be provided with a community of faith in which to grow and encourage us in our Christian journey. Regular participation in the life of the congregation is intended to be mutually beneficial. As other spur us on, so also, we spur others on. Rev. Stookey asks us: What do you cherish most about your life in the Christian church? What are the ways you have been blessed and what are the ways you are blessing others? I am grateful to God for being part of Peakland and for being part of the United Methodist Church. I've spent most of my life and all of my professional life as a United Methodist, and I'm grateful that we United Methodists enact our love of God by showing love to each other and to all of our neighbors. Sometimes I fail showing love to others, many times we in the church fail. That's why I take seriously the reminder in Hebrews not to give up meeting together, not to give up on the church life. We at Peakland believe Christ is calling us by reaching out, serving all and extending God's table and extending God's love to each other and to all of our neighbors. So in the days to come, I ask you to pray for Peakland, for our people and for our denomination. Pray for clarity on the ways we can reach out, serve all and extend God's table. Let us pray together now: God of all people, look with favor upon Christ's flock in here at Peakland. Cause our congregation to be an effective witness of your love and power. Banish from us petty rivalries and speaking ill of one another. Bind us together by your love and cause us to know ourselves to be a people called out of darkness. Thanks be to God and Amen.

Jim Berrier co-hosts with Bob. While recounting great folk and rock war-protest artists from the late 1960's and early 1970's such as Pete Seeger and The Smothers Brothers, Jim shares a personal story involving another such artist, Paul Stookey (of Peter, Paul and Mary fame). In the midst of a rally, Stookey was invited by […]

Welcome to the Instant Trivia podcast episode 560, where we ask the best trivia on the Internet. Round 1. Category: You Just Saved My Blank 1: Similar to but smaller than a mesa, it's also a city in Montana. butte. 2: It's a foot covering for skiers, or a trunk on a British car. a boot. 3: From an old word meaning "exchange", it's a pirate's ill-gained loot. booty. 4: It's the group of football players whose positions are behind the line of scrimmage; they may go into "motion". backfield. 5: When your movie's been shot, it's in this container. the can. Round 2. Category: Underwater 1: This legendary spirit of the sea keeps dead sailors, not gym shoes, in his "locker". Davy Jones. 2: These fabled creatures who are part fish lure men to live with them underwater. mermaids. 3: You have to use this sporting equipment to get to your room at Jules' Undersea Lodge in Key Largo. scuba diving gear. 4: After WWII this man and Philippe Taillez co-founded the Undersea Research Group at Toulon. Jacques Cousteau. 5: In "Le Morte d'Arthur" a mysterious arm hands this to King Arthur, then disappears underwater. Excalibur. Round 3. Category: Oscar Songs 1: As Dr. Dolittle, Rex Harrison sang this 1967 Oscar-winner to people too. "Talk To The Animals". 2: Only Oscar winner sung by a cricket, it's Disney's theme. "When You Wish Upon a Star". 3: 1942 Irving Berlin classic that's sold more records than any other. "White Christmas". 4: '38 winner that became Bob Hope's theme song. "Thanks for the Memory". 5: This 1st winner, from "Gay Divorcee", is also a luxury car. The Continental. Round 4. Category: Folk Singers 1: During a brief stint at the university of Minnesota, Robert Zimmerman began using this name. Bob Dylan. 2: In Steve Goodman's song, "The City Of New Orleans" was one of these. a train. 3: More formally, this trio could be called Yarrow, Stookey and Travers. Peter, Paul and Mary. 4: Her rendition of "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down" went to No. 3 on the pop charts in 1971. Joan Baez. 5: Lee Hays wrote "If I Had A Hammer" with this other member of the Weavers. Pete Seeger. Round 5. Category: Noted Pussycats 1: When talking about Sylvester, this character calls him a "Puddy Tat". Tweety Bird. 2: In the 1970 hit comedy "The Owl and the Pussycat", she was the title feline to George Segal's owl. Barbra Streisand. 3: Tom Jones' 1965 hit single "What's New Pussycat" was written by Hal David and this partner. Burt Bacharach. 4: Some Mother Goose scholars believe that this was the real queen visited by "Pussycat, Pussycat". Queen Elizabeth. 5: 3 years after playing "A Kitten With A Whip", she grew up as the title kitty in "The Tiger and the Pussycat". Ann-Margret. Thanks for listening! Come back tomorrow for more exciting trivia! Special thanks to https://blog.feedspot.com/trivia_podcasts/

Synopsis It's a book – it's a YouTube video – it's a concert hall work! It's by Stookey and Snicket! Now, “Stookey and Snicket” is not the name of a law firm in some obscure novel by Charles Dickens, but is in fact the collaborative team of American composer Nathaniel Stookey and American novelist Daniel Handler, who writes popular children's books under the pen name of Lemony Snicket. Stookey was the youngest composer ever commissioned for the San Francisco Symphony's New and Unusual Music Series when he collaborated with Handler on a piece for narrator and orchestra. Their collaboration, entitled “The Composer Is Dead,” premiered on this date in 2006. This “new and usual” work with a macabre title is similar to Prokofiev's “Peter and the Wolf” and Britten's “The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra” in that it intends to introduce young audiences to the instruments of the orchestra. But anyone familiar with Lemony Snicket books can expect something a little quirky, and, in fact, “The Composer Is Dead” is a murder mystery, complete with a police inspector rounding up the usual suspects, and eventually pointing the finger… And if you want to find out “whodunit” – well, you'll have to buy the book! Music Played in Today's Program Lemony Snicket and Nathaniel Stookey – The Composer is Dead (Lemony Snicket (aka Daniel Handler), narrator; San Francisco Symphony; Edwin Outwater, cond.) Book Audio CD

“Jazz: Now & Then” Noel Paul Stookey became a household name as the Paul part of the Peter Paul and Mary equation. The landmark folk trio formed in New York in the '60s and went on to lead the American folk music revival with massive hits like If I Had A Hammer, Puff The Magic Dragon, and Leaving On A Jet Plane. Hammer, of course was written by Pete Seeger and Jet Plane John Denver, but that was the thing about Peter Paul and Mary—they were incredible interpreters of American song. Their readings of Dylan tracks like Blowin' in the Wind, and the Times They Are A Changin' are further evidence that they could not only interpret but in many ways make those songs their own in the process. Peter Paul and Mary put out nearly twenty albums in their career, including 2003's In These Times and the band ceased to be when Mary Travers passed away in 2009. As for Stookey, he remains a pretty active guy both in and out of music. From founding the non-profit Music To Life with his daughter to producing artists like Dave Mallet and Gordon Bok to playing at Dartmouth in honor of Martin Luther King Day, Stookey is still out there, doing the work. And speaking of work, his new album has just hit shelves. Titled Fazz: Now & Then, the staggering 20-track collection mixes new compositions with folk, jazz, gospel, classical, and world music. It's been germinating in Stookey's head for almost 25 years and it was well worth the wait. Filled with folky precision, poetic finesse and clever wordplay, Fazz: Now & Then is a refreshing blast of musical fusion commandeered by one of the greatest songwriters in American Music. A singer, a father, a husband, an artist and and an activist, Stookey is the real deal. www.noelpaulstookey.com www.bombshellradio.com www.alexgreenonline.com Stereo Embers: Twitter: @emberseditor Instagram: @emberspodcast Email: Email: Editor@stereoembersmagazine.com

Noel Paul Stookey is certainly not new to the Catch. After a wildly popular career holding down the center of Peter Paul & Mary, Noel has launched into a solo career singing about love, justice and his faith journey. His latest recording, “Fazz: Now & Then” can be found at www.noelpaulstookey.com along with the rest of his excellent work. Tonight we're going to talk about Christianity and labels.

Welcome to Creative On Purpose Live, insightful conversations with inspiring difference-makers to help you live your legacy in endeavors that matter. I'm your host, Scott Perry, Chief Difference-Maker at Creative on Purpose. If you're ready to fly higher in the difference only you can make, visit CreativeOnPurpose.com and sign up for our newsletter. Get insight and inspiration for better living and making a bigger difference delivered to your inbox 3-times every week and a free copy of the Live Your Legacy quickstart guide. Let's meet today's guest. Peg Stookey is a brand strategist at MaxPotential U. Learn more at MaxPotentialU.com.

“Once you're convinced that the root of all of us living creatures is love, then you're always looking for the redemptive solutions that we may have." Beloved singer/songwriter Noel Paul Stookey is here. Initially well-known as a member of the folk music trio Peter, Paul and Mary, he joins Daniel for a wide-ranging conversation about songwriting, music, American culture, and much more. At age 83, he is still singing, playing guitar, and bringing joy-- and maybe some peace-- to people the country over. Support Talking Beats with Daniel Lelchuk. Singer/songwriter Noel Paul Stookey has been altering both the musical and ethical landscape of this country and the world for decades—both as the “Paul” of the legendary Peter, Paul and Mary and as an independent musician who passionately believes in bringing the spiritual into the practice of daily life. Funny, irreverently reverent, thoughtful, compassionately passionate, Stookey's voice is known all across this land: from the “Wedding Song” to “In These Times.” Most recently Noel's musical political commentary entitled IMPEACHABLE (based on the familiar melody of UNFORGETTABLE) has reached viral status with the on-line community, yielding over a million facebook/youtube views. While acknowledging his history and the meaningful association with Peter and Mary - the trio perhaps best known for its blend of modern folk music and social activism, rallying support for safe energy, peace and civil rights at some of the most iconic events in our history—including the 1963 March on Washington with Martin Luther King, Noel Paul has stepped beyond the nostalgia of the folk era. Nearly $2 million, earned from Noel's now-classic “Wedding Song,” were used to fund the work of other socially responsible artists, which inspired Noel, along with his daughter Liz Stookey Sunde, to launch MusicToLife in 2001. The nonprofit has introduced groundbreaking ways to bring music to life for social change through technology, entertainment, artist collaboration and education. Whether judged by the subject matter of his current concert and recorded repertoire or by virtue of his active involvement with the MusicToLife initiative (www.musictolife.org) linking music fans to the expression of contemporary concerns via many different artists and musical genres, Stookey's current musical outlook continues to be fresh, optimistic and encouraging.

This episode our guest is a man well known as one of the most prolific forces behind the early ‘60s folk revival and a champion of civil rights during the decades that came after. His name is Noel Paul Stookey, the "Paul" who was an essential part of the trio known throughout the world as Peter, Paul and Mary. Always served on the front lines when it comes to advocacy and education, he, along with Peter Yarrow and the late Mary Travers, helped bring those populist precepts into the modern era in the midst of a tidal wave of social change that swept across America and the world throughout the iconic era of the 1960s. The group also played a critical role as part of the transition to modern music, sharing the songs of Bob Dylan, John Denver and Pete Seeger with audiences that were, up until that point, often unawares. Following the death of Mary Travers in 2009, Stookey doubled down on a solo career he intimated in 1971 with his Paul And album, and he's been at it ever since. His latest album, the aptly titled Just Causes, consists of a collection of his songs that span the past 50 years, and, as the title implies, continues to share his commitment to concerns he's focused on since early on. Please join us as we revisit the history of this major musical mainstay. Learn more about Noel Paul Stookey and his music at http://www.noelpaulstookey.com/ and you can even add your own selfie to his music video at https://www.revolution1x1.orgHost Lee Zimmerman is a freelance music writer whose articles have appeared in several leading music industry publications. A former promotions representative for ABC and Capital Records and director of communications for various CBS - affiliated television stations. Lee, who currently lives in East Tennessee, recently authored "Americana Music - Voices, Visionaries & Pioneers of an Honest Sound" which is now available on Amazon and other outlets. You can contact Lee at lezim@bellsouth.netCohost/Producer Billy Hubbard is a Tennessee based Americana Singer/Songwriter and former Regional Director of A&R for a Grammy winning company, as well as a music and podcast producer. Billy is also the venue developer and booking manager of The Station in East TN. As an artist Billy is endorsed by Godin's Simon & Patrick Guitars. You can find Billy Hubbard online at http://www.BillyHubbard.com 

Songs from Gaither, Stookey, and the classic hymn writers. No singing, words only. And what great words they were. Let's not forget our heritage.

Noel Paul Stookey has enjoyed an extraordinary career that began as the “Paul” of the seminal 1960s folk trio Peter, Paul & Mary.  Their signature vocal harmonies and songs like “Blowin’ In the Wind,” “If I Had a Hammer” and “Puff the Magic Dragon” were the soundtrack of a generation. In March, he released his last EP, “Just Causes,” a carefully curated compilation of 15 Stookey tracks, each bearing a theme of social concern, from hunger to nuclear proliferation, drug trafficking and the environment.  

In the Spirit of "Giving Back" Noel Paul Stookey, better known as the "Paul" of the seminal 1960s folk trio Peter, Paul & Mary, continues to embrace his role as an elder statesman of what was once referred to as "protest music." On March 22, Neworld Multimedia will release JUST CAUSES, a carefully curated compilation of 15 Stookey tracks, each bearing a theme of social concern. Freshly remixed and remastered by John Stuart, Stookey has paired each song in the collection with an appropriate designated non-profit organization to benefit from the album's net proceeds. Stookey, who has enjoyed a career that includes over 50 albums, both as part of the legendary trio and as a solo artist, continues his commitment to creating socially relevant music and to giving back. "Every songwriter eventually realizes that his art is meant for service: to entertain, inform and in a best-case scenario, to inspire," he explains. "As I look over the fifty plus years that I've attempted to capture 'lightening in a bottle' - a moment realized in a song that transcends time - I recognize that some musical creations seem to have a longer life because they address issues that still challenge us, no matter the generation." The concept for JUST CAUSES took shape quickly. "I was literally picking up groceries at our local store when I noticed for the umpteenth time that Paul Newman's brand of products from his Newman's Own company advertise on the packaging that '100% of profits go to charity,'" he explains. "I thought what a great concept and what the term 'profits' means in my life. I've been very fortunate in my musical pursuits, and the idea of 'giving back' at this point in my life and career struck a chord with me." JUST CAUSES addresses many of the issues that continue to plague our world, among them hunger, reproductive rights, immigration, missing children, safe energy, drug addiction and the environment. The title, Stookey explains, "indicates that the album contains not only those songs that share a commonality of mutual concern and intent, but also that those concerns are well-founded in a search for justice." He couples his song "The Connection," which describes the link between terrorist funding and drug trafficking, with the Partnership to End Addiction. "Danny's Downs" tells the moving story of a family discovering the blessing that comes with the welcoming of a Down Syndrome child into their lives, and the National Down Syndrome Congress has been paired with it. He includes his poignant "Jean Claude," a Holocaust tale told from the standpoint of a survivor's haunting memory, and has chosen the Dallas Holocaust & Human Rights Museum as its designated charity. His rollicking "Revolution (1x1)," which has been serviced to folk radio deejays as a focus track, is a new kind of protest song: Written six years after the horror of 9/11, "it may seem naive to have assumed that global peace and understanding could flow from something as commonplace as a friendly greeting to a stranger," he explains. "I believe that making the world a better place for all peoples calls for an investment of personal kindness." As the song suggests: I'm gonna start a revolution; I'm gonna take it to the street, I'm gonna smile at every solitary person that I meet! I'm gonna wave at total strangers no matter where they're from. I'm gonna start a revolution. gonna win it one by one. Check it out here: https://www.revolution1x1.org/ The designated charity for "Revolution (1x1)" is Sojourners, the faith-based organization that promotes the integration of spiritual renewal and social justice. Stookey's powerful rendition of "America the Beautiful," complete with two original verses he wrote, is paired with People for The American Way, the progressive advocacy organization founded by television producer Norman Lear to encourage civic participation and defend fundamental rights. He has also paired the song "Not That Kind of Music" with the non-profit initiative Music to Life, which he founded in 2001 with his daughter Liz Stookey Sunde to fund the work of other socially responsible artists through technology, entertainment, artist collaboration and education. The organization recently released its own compilation CD of 15 artists whose work they support called Hope Rises. Stookey grew up in the Midwest, where he played electric guitar in his high school rock 'n' roll band, and he moved to New York City at the age of 20 in search of independence. What he found was a burgeoning folk music scene and the "Peter" and "Mary" who would become his partners in the adventure of a lifetime. Via signature vocal harmonies and socially conscious songs like "If I Had a Hammer," the anti-war "Where Have All the Flowers Gone" and "Blowin' in the Wind," which gave early national exposure to then fledgling songwriter Bob Dylan, Peter, Paul & Mary's music penetrated every corner of the country. Their first album reached the top of the charts and stayed there for two years. They sang at the White House as well as intimate coffeehouses and large stadiums. When Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his "I Have a Dream" speech at the 1963 March on Washington, it was Peter, Paul and Mary who sang. In 1970, after years of playing 200-plus shows annually, the group took a much-needed sabbatical, providing Noel and his family a chance to relocate to the idyllic coast of Maine. While the group reunited a decade later, Noel used the hiatus and the reduced touring schedule to hone his solo canon, beginning with the release of his PAUL AND album, the first of some 20 solo album projects. His "Wedding Song (There Is Love)" from PAUL AND was a major chart hit and became a staple for-what else-weddings. JUST CAUSES is Stookey's latest album, his first since 2018, and perhaps the most concise attempt to curate music that speaks to making the world a better place. His focus as a songwriter has been to further his role as an activist and create music of conscience and concern. JUST CAUSES serves as a succinct showcase for his convictions. In addition to creating music projects of his own, Stookey oversees Neworld Multimedia, presenting new artists and creating children's TV shows and music. The royalties from "Wedding Song" go to the Public Domain Foundation, where nearly $2 million has already been put to work for charitable causes. He hopes that JUST CAUSES will continue in this tradition.

In the Spirit of "Giving Back" Noel Paul Stookey, better known as the "Paul" of the seminal 1960s folk trio Peter, Paul & Mary, continues to embrace his role as an elder statesman of what was once referred to as "protest music." On March 22, Neworld Multimedia will release JUST CAUSES, a carefully curated compilation of 15 Stookey tracks, each bearing a theme of social concern. Freshly remixed and remastered by John Stuart, Stookey has paired each song in the collection with an appropriate designated non-profit organization to benefit from the album's net proceeds. Stookey, who has enjoyed a career that includes over 50 albums, both as part of the legendary trio and as a solo artist, continues his commitment to creating socially relevant music and to giving back. "Every songwriter eventually realizes that his art is meant for service: to entertain, inform and in a best-case scenario, to inspire," he explains. "As I look over the fifty plus years that I've attempted to capture 'lightening in a bottle' - a moment realized in a song that transcends time - I recognize that some musical creations seem to have a longer life because they address issues that still challenge us, no matter the generation." The concept for JUST CAUSES took shape quickly. "I was literally picking up groceries at our local store when I noticed for the umpteenth time that Paul Newman's brand of products from his Newman's Own company advertise on the packaging that '100% of profits go to charity,'" he explains. "I thought what a great concept and what the term 'profits' means in my life. I've been very fortunate in my musical pursuits, and the idea of 'giving back' at this point in my life and career struck a chord with me." JUST CAUSES addresses many of the issues that continue to plague our world, among them hunger, reproductive rights, immigration, missing children, safe energy, drug addiction and the environment. The title, Stookey explains, "indicates that the album contains not only those songs that share a commonality of mutual concern and intent, but also that those concerns are well-founded in a search for justice." He couples his song "The Connection," which describes the link between terrorist funding and drug trafficking, with the Partnership to End Addiction. "Danny's Downs" tells the moving story of a family discovering the blessing that comes with the welcoming of a Down Syndrome child into their lives, and the National Down Syndrome Congress has been paired with it. He includes his poignant "Jean Claude," a Holocaust tale told from the standpoint of a survivor's haunting memory, and has chosen the Dallas Holocaust & Human Rights Museum as its designated charity. His rollicking "Revolution (1x1)," which has been serviced to folk radio deejays as a focus track, is a new kind of protest song: Written six years after the horror of 9/11, "it may seem naive to have assumed that global peace and understanding could flow from something as commonplace as a friendly greeting to a stranger," he explains. "I believe that making the world a better place for all peoples calls for an investment of personal kindness." As the song suggests: I'm gonna start a revolution; I'm gonna take it to the street, I'm gonna smile at every solitary person that I meet! I'm gonna wave at total strangers no matter where they're from. I'm gonna start a revolution. gonna win it one by one. Check it out here: https://www.revolution1x1.org/ The designated charity for "Revolution (1x1)" is Sojourners, the faith-based organization that promotes the integration of spiritual renewal and social justice. Stookey's powerful rendition of "America the Beautiful," complete with two original verses he wrote, is paired with People for The American Way, the progressive advocacy organization founded by television producer Norman Lear to encourage civic participation and defend fundamental rights. He has also paired the song "Not That Kind of Music" with the non-profit initiative Music to Life, which he founded in 2001 with his daughter Liz Stookey Sunde to fund the work of other socially responsible artists through technology, entertainment, artist collaboration and education. The organization recently released its own compilation CD of 15 artists whose work they support called Hope Rises. Stookey grew up in the Midwest, where he played electric guitar in his high school rock 'n' roll band, and he moved to New York City at the age of 20 in search of independence. What he found was a burgeoning folk music scene and the "Peter" and "Mary" who would become his partners in the adventure of a lifetime. Via signature vocal harmonies and socially conscious songs like "If I Had a Hammer," the anti-war "Where Have All the Flowers Gone" and "Blowin' in the Wind," which gave early national exposure to then fledgling songwriter Bob Dylan, Peter, Paul & Mary's music penetrated every corner of the country. Their first album reached the top of the charts and stayed there for two years. They sang at the White House as well as intimate coffeehouses and large stadiums. When Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his "I Have a Dream" speech at the 1963 March on Washington, it was Peter, Paul and Mary who sang. In 1970, after years of playing 200-plus shows annually, the group took a much-needed sabbatical, providing Noel and his family a chance to relocate to the idyllic coast of Maine. While the group reunited a decade later, Noel used the hiatus and the reduced touring schedule to hone his solo canon, beginning with the release of his PAUL AND album, the first of some 20 solo album projects. His "Wedding Song (There Is Love)" from PAUL AND was a major chart hit and became a staple for-what else-weddings. JUST CAUSES is Stookey's latest album, his first since 2018, and perhaps the most concise attempt to curate music that speaks to making the world a better place. His focus as a songwriter has been to further his role as an activist and create music of conscience and concern. JUST CAUSES serves as a succinct showcase for his convictions. In addition to creating music projects of his own, Stookey oversees Neworld Multimedia, presenting new artists and creating children's TV shows and music. The royalties from "Wedding Song" go to the Public Domain Foundation, where nearly $2 million has already been put to work for charitable causes. He hopes that JUST CAUSES will continue in this tradition.

Stookey, Haven, Melody 4, Good Twins, Gaither... they all love singing about Jesus in their own way. Here is some of the poetry they have given us.

Singer/songwriter Noel Paul Stookey has been altering both the musical and ethical landscape of this country and the world for decades—both as the “Paul” of the legendary Peter, Paul and Mary and as an independent musician who passionately believes in bringing the spiritual into the practice of daily life. Funny, irreverently reverent, thoughtful, compassionately passionate, Stookey's voice is known all across this land: from the “Wedding Song” to “In These Times.”

Episode one hundred and nine of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at "Blowin' in the Wind", Peter, Paul and Mary, Bob Dylan, the UK folk scene and the civil rights movement. Those of you who get angry at me whenever I say anything that acknowledges the existence of racism may want to skip this one. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode.   Patreon backers also have a ten-minute bonus episode available, on "Santa Claus is Coming to Town" by the Crystals. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt's irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ ----more---- Resources As always, I've created a Mixcloud streaming playlist with full versions of all the songs in the episode.   This compilation contains all Peter, Paul and Mary's hits. I have used *many* books for this episode, most of which I will also be using for future episodes on Dylan: The Mayor of MacDougal Street by Dave Van Ronk and Elijah Wald is the fascinating and funny autobiography of Dylan's mentor in his Greenwich Village period, including his interactions with Albert Grossman. Chronicles Volume 1 by Bob Dylan is a partial, highly inaccurate, but thoroughly readable autobiography. Bob Dylan: All The Songs by Phillipe Margotin and Jean-Michel Guesdon is a song-by-song look at every song Dylan ever wrote, as is Revolution in the Air, by Clinton Heylin. Heylin also wrote the most comprehensive and accurate biography of Dylan, Behind the Shades. I've also used Robert Shelton's No Direction Home, which is less accurate, but which is written by someone who knew Dylan. Only one book exists on Peter, Paul, and Mary themselves, and it is a hideously overpriced coffee table book consisting mostly of photos, so I wouldn't bother with it.  Roots, Radicals, and Rockers: How Skiffle Changed the World by Billy Bragg has some great information on the British folk scene of the fifties and sixties. And Singing From the Floor is an oral history of British folk clubs, including a chapter on Dylan's 1962 visit to London.   Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript   Today we're going to look at the first manufactured pop band we will see in this story, but not the last -- a group cynically put together by a manager to try and cash in on a fad, but one who were important enough that in a small way they helped to change history. We're going to look at the March on Washington and the civil rights movement, at Bob Dylan blossoming into a songwriter and the English folk revival, and at "Blowin' in the Wind" by Peter, Paul, and Mary: [Excerpt: Peter, Paul and Mary, "Blowin' in the Wind"] Albert Grossman was an unusual figure in the world of folk music. The folk revival had started out as an idealistic movement, mostly centred on Pete Seeger, and outside a few ultra-commercial acts like the Kingston Trio, most of the people involved were either doing it for the love of the music, or as a means of advancing their political goals. No doubt many of the performers on the burgeoning folk circuit were also quite keen to make money -- there are very few musicians who don't like being able to eat and have a home to live in -- but very few of the people involved were primarily motivated by increasing their income. Grossman was a different matter. He was a businessman, and he was interested in money more than anything else -- and for that he was despised by many of the people in the Greenwich Village folk scene. But he was, nonetheless, someone who was interested in making money *from folk music* specifically. And in the late fifties and early sixties this was less of a strange idea than it might have seemed. We talked back in the episode on "Drugstore Rock and Roll" about how rock and roll music was starting to be seen as the music of the teenager, and how "teenager" was, for the first time, becoming a marketing category into which people could be segmented. But the thing about music that's aimed at a particular age group is that once you're out of that age group you are no longer the target audience for that music. Someone who was sixteen in 1956 was twenty in 1960, and people in their twenties don't necessarily want to be listening to music aimed at teenagers. But at the same time, those people didn't want to listen to the music that their parents were listening to.  There's no switch that gets flipped on your twentieth birthday that means that you suddenly no longer like Little Richard but instead like Rosemary Clooney. So there was a gap in the market, for music that was more adult than rock and roll was perceived as being, but which still set itself apart from the pop music that was listened to by people in their thirties and forties. And in the late fifties and early sixties, that gap seemed to be filled by a commercialised version of the folk revival.  In particular, Harry Belafonte had a huge run of massive hit albums with collections of folk, calypso, and blues songs, presented in a way that was acceptable to an older, more settled audience while still preserving some of the rawness of the originals, like his version of Lead Belly's "Midnight Special", recorded in 1962 with a young Bob Dylan on harmonica: [Excerpt: Harry Belafonte, "Midnight Special"] Meanwhile, the Kingston Trio had been having huge hits with cleaned-up versions of old folk ballads like "Tom Dooley": [Excerpt: The Kingston Trio, "Tom Dooley"] So Grossman believed that there was a real market out there for something that was as clean and bright and friendly as the Kingston Trio, but with just a tiny hint of the bohemian Greenwich Village atmosphere to go with it. Something that wouldn't scare TV people and DJs, but which might seem just the tiniest bit more radical than the Kingston Trio did. Something mass-produced, but which seemed more authentic. So Grossman decided to put together what we would now call a manufactured pop group. It would be a bit like the Kingston Trio, but ever so slightly more political, and rather than being three men, it would be two men and a woman. Grossman had very particular ideas about what he wanted -- he wanted a waifish, beautiful woman at the centre of the group, he wanted a man who brought a sense of folk authenticity, and he wanted someone who could add a comedy element to the performances, to lighten them.  For the woman, he chose Mary Travers, who had been around the folk scene for several years at this point, starting out with a group called the Song Swappers, who had recorded an album of union songs with Pete Seeger back in 1955: [Excerpt: Pete Seeger and the Song Swappers, "Solidarity Forever"] Travers was chosen in part because of her relative shyness -- she had never wanted to be a professional singer, and her introverted nature made her perfect for the image Grossman wanted -- an image that was carefully cultivated, to the point that when the group were rehearsing in Florida, Grossman insisted Travers stay inside so she wouldn't get a tan and spoil her image. As the authentic male folk singer, Grossman chose Peter Yarrow, who was the highest profile of the three, as he had performed as a solo artist for a number of years and had appeared on TV and at the Newport Folk Festival, though he had not yet recorded. And for the comedy element, he chose Noel Stookey, who regularly performed as a comedian around Greenwich Village -- in the group's very slim autobiography, Stookey compares himself to two other comedians on that circuit, Bill Cosby and Woody Allen, comparisons that were a much better look in 2009 when the book was published than they are today. Grossman had originally wanted Dave Van Ronk to be the low harmony singer, rather than Stookey, but Van Ronk turned him down flat, wanting no part of a Greenwich Village Kingston Trio, though he later said he sometimes looked at his bank account rather wistfully. The group's name was, apparently, inspired by a line in the old folk song "I Was Born About 10,000 Years Ago", which was recorded by many people, but most famously by Elvis Presley in the 1970s: [Excerpt: Elvis Presley, "I Was Born About 10,000 Years Ago"] The "Peter, Paul, and Moses" from that song became Peter, Paul and Mary -- Stookey started going by his middle name, Paul, on stage, in order to fit the group name, though he still uses Noel in his daily life. While Peter, Paul, and Mary were the front people of the group, there were several other people who were involved in the creative process -- the group used a regular bass player, Bill Lee, the father of the filmmaker Spike Lee, who played on all their recordings, as well as many other recordings from Greenwich Village folk musicians. They also had, as their musical director, a man named Milt Okun who came up with their arrangements and helped them choose and shape the material. Grossman shaped this team into a formidable commercial force. Almost everyone who talks about Grossman compares him to Colonel Tom Parker, and the comparison is a reasonable one. Grossman was extremely good at making money for his acts, so long as a big chunk of the money came to him. There's a story about him signing Odetta, one of the great folk artists of the period, and telling her "you can stay with your current manager, and make a hundred thousand dollars this year, and he'll take twenty percent, or you can come with me, and make a quarter of a million dollars, but I'll take fifty percent". That was the attitude that Grossman took to everyone. He cut himself in to every contract, salami-slicing his artists' royalties at each stage. But it can't be denied that his commercial instincts were sound. Peter, Paul, and Mary's first album was a huge success. The second single from the album, their version of the old Weavers song "If I Had a Hammer", written by Pete Seeger and Lee Hays, went to number ten on the pop charts: [Excerpt: Peter, Paul and Mary, "If I Had a Hammer"] And the album itself went to number one and eventually went double-platinum -- a remarkable feat for a collection of songs that, however prettily arranged, contained a fairly uncompromising selection of music from the folk scene, with songs by Seeger, Dave van Ronk, and Rev. Gary Davis mixing with traditional songs like "This Train" and originals by Stookey and Yarrow. Their second album was less successful at first, with its first two singles flopping. But the third, a pretty children's song by Yarrow and his friend Leonard Lipton, went to number two on the pop charts and number one on the Adult Contemporary charts: [Excerpt: Peter, Paul, and Mary, "Puff the Magic Dragon"] Incidentally, Leonard Lipton, who wrote that lyric, became independently wealthy from the royalties from the song, and used the leisure that gave him to pursue his passion of inventing 3D projection systems, which eventually made him an even wealthier man -- if you've seen a 3D film in the cinema in the last couple of decades, it's almost certainly been using the systems Lipton invented. So Peter, Paul, and Mary were big stars, and having big hits. And Albert Grossman was constantly on the lookout for more material for them. And eventually he found it, and the song that was to make both him, his group, and its writer, very, very rich, in the pages of Broadside magazine. When we left Bob Dylan, he was still primarily a performer, and not really known for his songwriting, but he had already written a handful of songs, and he was being drawn into the more political side of the folk scene. In large part this was because of his girlfriend, Suze Rotolo, with whom Dylan was very deeply in love, and who was a very political person indeed. Dylan had political views, but wasn't particularly driven by them -- Rotolo very much was, and encouraged him to write songs about politics. For much of early 1962, Dylan was being pulled in two directions at once -- he was writing songs inspired by Robert Johnson, and trying to adapt Johnson's style to fit himself, but at the same time he was writing songs like "The Death of Emmett Till", about the 1955 murder of a Black teenager which had galvanised the civil rights movement, and "The Ballad of Donald White", about a Black man on death row. Dylan would later be very dismissive of these attempts at topicality, saying "I realize now that my reasons and motives behind it were phony, I didn’t have to write it; I was bothered by many other things that I pretended I wasn’t bothered by, in order to write this song about Emmett Till, a person I never even knew". But at the time they got him a great deal of attention in the small US folk-music scene, when they were published in magazines like Broadside and Sing Out, which collected political songs. Most of these early songs are juvenilia, with a couple of exceptions like the rather marvellous anti-bomb song "Let Me Die in My Footsteps", but the song that changed everything for Dylan was a different matter.  "Blowin' in the Wind" was inspired by the melody of the old nineteenth century song "No More Auction Block", a song that is often described as a "spiritual", though in fact it's a purely secular song about slavery: [Excerpt: Odetta, "No More Auction Block"] That song had seen something of a revival in folk circles in the late fifties, especially because part of its melody had been incorporated into another song, "We Shall Overcome", which had become an anthem of the civil rights movement when it was revived and adapted by Pete Seeger: [Excerpt: Pete Seeger, "We Shall Overcome"] Dylan took this melody, with its associations with the fight for the rights of Black people, and came up with new lyrics, starting with the line "How many roads must a man walk down, before you call him a man?" He wrote two verses of the song -- the first and last verses -- in a short burst of inspiration, and a few weeks later came back to it and added another verse, the second, which incorporated allusions to the Biblical prophet Ezekiel, and which is notably less inspired than those earlier verses. In later decades, many people have looked at the lyrics to the song and seen it as the first of what would become a whole subgenre of non-protest protest songs -- they've seen the abstraction of "How many roads must a man walk down before you call him a man?" as being nice-sounding rhetoric that doesn't actually mean anything, in much the same way as something like, say, "Another Day in Paradise" or "Eve of Destruction", songs that make nonspecific complaints about nonspecific bad things. But while "Blowin' in the Wind" is a song that has multiple meanings and can be applied to multiple situations, as most good songs can, that line was, at the time in which it was written, a very concrete question. The civil rights movement was asking for many things -- for the right to vote, for an end to segregation, for an end to police brutality, but also for basic respect and acknowledgment of Black people's shared humanity. We've already heard in a couple of past episodes Big Bill Broonzy singing "When Do I Get to Be Called a Man?": [Excerpt: Big Bill Broonzy, "When Do I Get to Be Called a Man?"] Because at the time, it was normal for white people to refer to Black men as "boy". As Dr. Martin Luther King said in his "Letter From Birmingham Jail", one of the greatest pieces of writing of the twentieth century, a letter in large part about how white moderates were holding Black people back with demands to be "reasonable" and let things take their time: "when you have seen hate-filled policemen curse, kick, brutalize, and even kill your black brothers and sisters with impunity; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society... when your first name becomes“ and here Dr. King uses a racial slur which I, as a white man, will not say, "and your middle name becomes “boy” (however old you are) and your last name becomes “John,” and when your wife and mother are never given the respected title “Mrs.”; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never knowing what to expect next, and plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of “nobodyness”—then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait. There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over and men are no longer willing to be plunged into an abyss of injustice where they experience the bleakness of corroding despair." King's great letter was written in 1963, less than a year after Dylan was writing his song but before it became widely known. In the context of 1962, the demand to call a man a man was a very real political issue, not an aphorism that could go in a Hallmark card. Dylan recorded the song in June 1962, during the sessions for his second album, which at the time was going under the working title "Bob Dylan's Blues": [Excerpt: Bob Dylan, "Blowin' in the Wind"] By the time he recorded it, two major changes had happened to him. The first was that Suze Rotolo had travelled to Spain for several months, leaving him bereft -- for the next few months, his songwriting took a turn towards songs about either longing for the return of a lost love, like "Tomorrow is a Long Time", one of his most romantic songs, or about how the protagonist doesn't even need his girlfriend anyway and she can leave if she likes, see if he cares, like "Don't Think Twice It's Alright". The other change was that Albert Grossman had become his manager, largely on the strength of "Blowin' in the Wind", which Grossman thought had huge potential. Grossman signed Dylan up, taking twenty percent of all his earnings -- including on the contract with Columbia Records Dylan already had -- and got him signed to a new publisher, Witmark Publishing, where the aptly-named Artie Mogull thought that "Blowin' in the Wind" could be marketed. Grossman took his twenty percent of Dylan's share of the songwriting money as his commission from Dylan -- and fifty percent of Witmark's share of the money as his commission from Witmark, meaning that Dylan was getting forty percent of the money for writing the songs, while Grossman was getting thirty-five percent. Grossman immediately got involved in the recording of Dylan's second album, and started having personality clashes with John Hammond. It was apparently Grossman who suggested that Dylan "go electric" for the first time, with the late-1962 single "Mixed-Up Confusion": [Excerpt: Bob Dylan, "Mixed-Up Confusion"] Neither Hammond nor Dylan liked that record, and it seemed clear for the moment that the way forward for Dylan was to continue in an acoustic folk vein. Dylan was also starting to get inspired more by English folk music, and incorporate borrowings from English music into his songwriting. That's most apparent in "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall", written in September 1962. Dylan took the structure of that song from the old English ballad, "Lord Randall": [Excerpt: Ewan MacColl, "Lord Randall"] He reworked that structure into a song of apocalypse, again full of the Biblical imagery he'd tried in the second verse of  "Blowin' in the Wind", but this time more successfully incorporating it: [Excerpt: Bob Dylan, "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall"] His interest in English folk music was to become more important in his songwriting in the following months, as Dylan was about to travel to the UK and encounter the British folk music scene. A TV director called Philip Saville had seen Dylan performing in New York, and had decided he would be perfect for the role of a poet in a TV play he was putting on, Madhouse in Castle Street, and got Dylan flown over to perform in it. Unfortunately, no-one seems to have told Dylan what would be involved in this, and he proved incapable of learning his lines or acting, so the show was rethought -- the role of the poet was given to David Warner, later to become one of Britain's most famous screen actors, and Dylan was cast in a new role as a singer called "Bobby", who had few or no lines but did get to sing a few songs, including "Blowin' in the Wind", which was the first time the song was heard by anyone outside of the New York folk scene. Dylan was in London for about a month, and while he was there he immersed himself in the British folk scene. This scene was in some ways modelled on the American scene, and had some of the same people involved, but it was very different. The initial spark for the British folk revival had come in the late 1940s, when A.L. Lloyd, a member of the Communist Party, had published a book of folk songs he'd collected, along with some Marxist analysis of how folk songs evolved. In the early fifties, Alan Lomax, then in the UK to escape McCarthyism, put Lloyd in touch with Ewan MacColl, a songwriter and performer from Manchester, who we heard earlier singing "Lord Randall". MacColl, like Lloyd, was a Communist, but the two also shared a passion for older folk songs, and they began recording and performing together, recording traditional songs like "The Handsome Cabin Boy": [Excerpt: Ewan MacColl and A.L. Lloyd, "The Handsome Cabin Boy"] MacColl and Lloyd latched on to the skiffle movement, and MacColl started his own club night, Ballads and Blues, which tried to push the skifflers in the direction of performing more music based in English traditional music. This had already been happening to an extent with things like the Vipers performing "Maggie May", a song about a sex worker in Liverpool: [Excerpt: The Vipers Skiffle Group, "Maggie May"] But this started to happen a lot more with MacColl's encouragement. At one point in 1956, there was even a TV show hosted by Lomax and featuring a band that included Lomax, MacColl, Jim Bray, the bass player from Chris Barber's band, Shirley Collins -- a folk singer who was also Lomax's partner -- and Peggy Seeger, who was Pete Seeger's sister and who had also entered into a romantic relationship with MacColl, whose most famous song, "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face", was written both about and for her: [Excerpt: Peggy Seeger, "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face"] It was Seeger who instigated what became the most notable feature at the Ballads and Blues club and its successor the Singer's Club. She'd burst out laughing when she saw Long John Baldry sing "Rock Island Line", because he was attempting to sing in an American accent. As someone who had actually known Lead Belly, she found British imitations of his singing ludicrous, and soon there was a policy at the clubs that people would only sing songs that were originally sung with their normal vowel sounds. So Seeger could only sing songs from the East Coast of the US, because she didn't have the Western vowels of a Woody Guthrie, while MacColl could sing English and Scottish songs, but nothing from Wales or Ireland. As the skiffle craze died down, it splintered into several linked scenes. We've already seen how in Liverpool and London it spawned guitar groups like the Shadows and the Beatles, while in London it also led to the electric blues scene. It also led to a folk scene that was very linked to the blues scene at first, but was separate from it, and which was far more political, centred around MacColl. That scene, like the US one, combined topical songs about political events from a far-left viewpoint with performances of traditional songs, but in the case of the British one these were mostly old sea shanties and sailors' songs, and the ancient Child Ballads, rather than Appalachian country music -- though a lot of the songs have similar roots.  And unlike the blues scene, the folk scene spread all over the country. There were clubs in Manchester, in Liverpool (run by the group the Spinners), in Bradford, in Hull (run by the Waterson family) and most other major British cities. The musicians who played these venues were often inspired by MacColl and Lloyd, but the younger generation of musicians often looked askance at what they saw as MacColl's dogmatic approach, preferring to just make good music rather than submit it to what they saw as MacColl's ideological purity test, even as they admired his musicianship and largely agreed with his politics. And one of these younger musicians was a guitarist named Martin Carthy, who was playing a club called the King and Queen on Goodge Street when he saw Bob Dylan walk in. He recognised Dylan from the cover of Sing Out! magazine, and invited him to get up on stage and do a few numbers. For the next few weeks, Carthy showed Dylan round the folk scene -- Dylan went down great at the venues where Carthy normally played, and at the Roundhouse, but flopped around the venues that were dominated by MacColl, as the people there seemed to think of Dylan as a sort of cut-rate Ramblin' Jack Elliot, as Elliot had been such a big part of the skiffle and folk scenes. Carthy also taught Dylan a number of English folk songs, including "Lord Franklin": [Excerpt: Martin Carthy, "Lord Franklin"] and "Scarborough Fair": [Excerpt: Martin Carthy, "Scarborough Fair"] Dylan immediately incorporated the music he'd learned from Carthy into his songwriting, basing "Bob Dylan's Dream" on "Lord Franklin", and even more closely basing "GIrl From the North Country" on "Scarborough Fair": [Excerpt: Bob Dylan, "Girl From The North Country"] After his trip to London, Dylan went over to Europe to see if he could catch up with Suze, but she had already gone back to New York -- their letters to each other crossed in the post. On his return, they reunited at least for a while, and she posed with him for the photo for the cover of what was to be his second album.  Dylan had thought that album completed when he left for England, but he soon discovered that there were problems with the album -- the record label didn't want to release the comedy talking blues "Talking John Birch Society Paranoid Blues", because they thought it might upset the fascists in the John Birch Society. The same thing would later make sure that Dylan never played the Ed Sullivan Show, because when he was booked onto the show he insisted on playing that song, and so they cancelled the booking. In this case, though, it gave him an excuse to remove what he saw as the weaker songs on the album, including "Tomorrow is a Long Time", and replace them with four new songs, three of them inspired by traditional English folk songs -- "Bob Dylan's Dream",  "Girl From the North Country", and "Masters of War" which took its melody from the old folk song "Nottamun Town" popularised on the British folk circuit by an American singer, Jean Ritchie: [Excerpt: Jean Ritchie, "Nottamun Town"] These new recordings weren't produced by John Hammond, as the rest of the album was. Albert Grossman had been trying from the start to get total control over Dylan, and didn't want Hammond, who had been around before Grossman, involved in Dylan's career. Instead, a new producer named Tom Wilson was in charge. Wilson was a remarkable man, but seemed an odd fit for a left-wing folk album. He was one of the few Black producers working for a major label, though he'd started out as an indie producer. He was a Harvard economics graduate, and had been president of the Young Republicans during his time there -- he remained a conservative all his life -- but he was far from conservative in his musical tastes. When he'd left university, he'd borrowed nine hundred dollars and started his own record label, Transition, which had put out some of the best experimental jazz of the fifties, produced by Wilson, including the debut albums by Sun Ra: [Excerpt: Sun Ra, "Brainville"] and Cecil Taylor: [Excerpt: Cecil Taylor, "Bemsha Swing"] Wilson later described his first impressions of Dylan: "I didn’t even particularly like folk music. I’d been recording Sun Ra and Coltrane … I thought folk music was for the dumb guys. This guy played like the dumb guys, but then these words came out. I was flabbergasted." Wilson would soon play a big part in Dylan's career, but for now his job was just to get those last few tracks for the album recorded. In the end, the final recording session for Dylan's second album was more than a year after the first one, and it came out into a very different context from when he'd started recording it. Because while Dylan was putting the finishing touches on his second album, Peter Paul and Mary were working on their third, and they were encouraged by Grossman to record three Bob Dylan songs, since that way Grossman would make more money from them. Their version of "Blowin' in the Wind" came out as a single a few weeks after The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan came out, and sold 300,000 copies in the first week: [Excerpt: Peter, Paul, and Mary, "Blowin' in the Wind"] The record went to number two on the charts, and their followup, "Don't Think Twice it's Alright", another Dylan song, went top ten as well.  "Blowin' in the Wind" became an instant standard, and was especially picked up by Black performers, as it became a civil rights anthem. Mavis Staples of the Staple Singers said later that she was astonished that a white man could write a line like "How many roads must a man walk down before you call him a man?", saying "That's what my father experienced" -- and the Staple Singers recorded it, of course: [Excerpt: The Staple Singers, "Blowin' in the Wind"] as did Sam Cooke: [Excerpt: Sam Cooke, "Blowin' in the Wind"] And Stevie Wonder: [Excerpt: Stevie Wonder, "Blowin' in the Wind"] But the song's most important performance came from Peter, Paul and Mary, performing it on a bill with Dylan, Odetta, Joan Baez, and Mahalia Jackson in August 1963, just as the song had started to descend the charts. Because those artists were the entertainment for the March on Washington, in which more than a quarter of a million people descended on Washington both to support President Kennedy's civil rights bill and to speak out and say that it wasn't going far enough. That was one of the great moments in American political history, full of incendiary speeches like the one by John Lewis: [Excerpt: John Lewis, March on Washington speech] But the most memorable moment at that march  came when Dr. King was giving his speech. Mahalia Jackson shouted out "Tell them about the dream, Martin", and King departed from his prepared words and instead improvised based on themes he'd used in other speeches previously, coming out with some of the most famous words ever spoken: [Excerpt: Martin Luther King, "I Have a Dream"] The civil rights movement was more than one moment, however inspiring, and white people like myself have a tendency to reduce it just to Dr. King, and to reduce Dr. King just to those words -- which is one reason why I quoted from Letter From Birmingham Jail earlier, as that is a much less safe and canonised piece of writing. But it's still true to say that if there is a single most important moment in the history of the post-war struggle for Black rights, it was that moment, and because of "Blowin' in the Wind", both Dylan and Peter, Paul and Mary were minor parts of that event. After 1963, Peter, Paul and Mary quickly became passe with the British Invasion, only having two more top ten hits, one with a novelty song in 1967 and one with "Leaving on a Jet Plane" in 1969. They split up in 1970, and around that time Yarrow was arrested and convicted for a sexual offence involving a fourteen-year-old girl, though he was later pardoned by President Carter. The group reformed in 1978 and toured the nostalgia circuit until Mary's death in 2009. The other two still occasionally perform together, as Peter and Noel Paul. Bob Dylan, of course, went on to bigger things after "Blowin' in the Wind" suddenly made him into the voice of a generation -- a position he didn't ask for and didn't seem to want. We'll be hearing much more from him. And we'll also be hearing more about the struggle for Black civil rights, as that's a story, much like Dylan's, that continues to this day.

Episode one hundred and nine of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “Blowin’ in the Wind”, Peter, Paul and Mary, Bob Dylan, the UK folk scene and the civil rights movement. Those of you who get angry at me whenever I say anything that acknowledges the existence of racism may want to skip this one. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode.   Patreon backers also have a ten-minute bonus episode available, on “Santa Claus is Coming to Town” by the Crystals. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt’s irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ —-more—- Resources As always, I’ve created a Mixcloud streaming playlist with full versions of all the songs in the episode.   This compilation contains all Peter, Paul and Mary’s hits. I have used *many* books for this episode, most of which I will also be using for future episodes on Dylan: The Mayor of MacDougal Street by Dave Van Ronk and Elijah Wald is the fascinating and funny autobiography of Dylan’s mentor in his Greenwich Village period, including his interactions with Albert Grossman. Chronicles Volume 1 by Bob Dylan is a partial, highly inaccurate, but thoroughly readable autobiography. Bob Dylan: All The Songs by Phillipe Margotin and Jean-Michel Guesdon is a song-by-song look at every song Dylan ever wrote, as is Revolution in the Air, by Clinton Heylin. Heylin also wrote the most comprehensive and accurate biography of Dylan, Behind the Shades. I’ve also used Robert Shelton’s No Direction Home, which is less accurate, but which is written by someone who knew Dylan. Only one book exists on Peter, Paul, and Mary themselves, and it is a hideously overpriced coffee table book consisting mostly of photos, so I wouldn’t bother with it.  Roots, Radicals, and Rockers: How Skiffle Changed the World by Billy Bragg has some great information on the British folk scene of the fifties and sixties. And Singing From the Floor is an oral history of British folk clubs, including a chapter on Dylan’s 1962 visit to London.   Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript   Today we’re going to look at the first manufactured pop band we will see in this story, but not the last — a group cynically put together by a manager to try and cash in on a fad, but one who were important enough that in a small way they helped to change history. We’re going to look at the March on Washington and the civil rights movement, at Bob Dylan blossoming into a songwriter and the English folk revival, and at “Blowin’ in the Wind” by Peter, Paul, and Mary: [Excerpt: Peter, Paul and Mary, “Blowin’ in the Wind”] Albert Grossman was an unusual figure in the world of folk music. The folk revival had started out as an idealistic movement, mostly centred on Pete Seeger, and outside a few ultra-commercial acts like the Kingston Trio, most of the people involved were either doing it for the love of the music, or as a means of advancing their political goals. No doubt many of the performers on the burgeoning folk circuit were also quite keen to make money — there are very few musicians who don’t like being able to eat and have a home to live in — but very few of the people involved were primarily motivated by increasing their income. Grossman was a different matter. He was a businessman, and he was interested in money more than anything else — and for that he was despised by many of the people in the Greenwich Village folk scene. But he was, nonetheless, someone who was interested in making money *from folk music* specifically. And in the late fifties and early sixties this was less of a strange idea than it might have seemed. We talked back in the episode on “Drugstore Rock and Roll” about how rock and roll music was starting to be seen as the music of the teenager, and how “teenager” was, for the first time, becoming a marketing category into which people could be segmented. But the thing about music that’s aimed at a particular age group is that once you’re out of that age group you are no longer the target audience for that music. Someone who was sixteen in 1956 was twenty in 1960, and people in their twenties don’t necessarily want to be listening to music aimed at teenagers. But at the same time, those people didn’t want to listen to the music that their parents were listening to.  There’s no switch that gets flipped on your twentieth birthday that means that you suddenly no longer like Little Richard but instead like Rosemary Clooney. So there was a gap in the market, for music that was more adult than rock and roll was perceived as being, but which still set itself apart from the pop music that was listened to by people in their thirties and forties. And in the late fifties and early sixties, that gap seemed to be filled by a commercialised version of the folk revival.  In particular, Harry Belafonte had a huge run of massive hit albums with collections of folk, calypso, and blues songs, presented in a way that was acceptable to an older, more settled audience while still preserving some of the rawness of the originals, like his version of Lead Belly’s “Midnight Special”, recorded in 1962 with a young Bob Dylan on harmonica: [Excerpt: Harry Belafonte, “Midnight Special”] Meanwhile, the Kingston Trio had been having huge hits with cleaned-up versions of old folk ballads like “Tom Dooley”: [Excerpt: The Kingston Trio, “Tom Dooley”] So Grossman believed that there was a real market out there for something that was as clean and bright and friendly as the Kingston Trio, but with just a tiny hint of the bohemian Greenwich Village atmosphere to go with it. Something that wouldn’t scare TV people and DJs, but which might seem just the tiniest bit more radical than the Kingston Trio did. Something mass-produced, but which seemed more authentic. So Grossman decided to put together what we would now call a manufactured pop group. It would be a bit like the Kingston Trio, but ever so slightly more political, and rather than being three men, it would be two men and a woman. Grossman had very particular ideas about what he wanted — he wanted a waifish, beautiful woman at the centre of the group, he wanted a man who brought a sense of folk authenticity, and he wanted someone who could add a comedy element to the performances, to lighten them.  For the woman, he chose Mary Travers, who had been around the folk scene for several years at this point, starting out with a group called the Song Swappers, who had recorded an album of union songs with Pete Seeger back in 1955: [Excerpt: Pete Seeger and the Song Swappers, “Solidarity Forever”] Travers was chosen in part because of her relative shyness — she had never wanted to be a professional singer, and her introverted nature made her perfect for the image Grossman wanted — an image that was carefully cultivated, to the point that when the group were rehearsing in Florida, Grossman insisted Travers stay inside so she wouldn’t get a tan and spoil her image. As the authentic male folk singer, Grossman chose Peter Yarrow, who was the highest profile of the three, as he had performed as a solo artist for a number of years and had appeared on TV and at the Newport Folk Festival, though he had not yet recorded. And for the comedy element, he chose Noel Stookey, who regularly performed as a comedian around Greenwich Village — in the group’s very slim autobiography, Stookey compares himself to two other comedians on that circuit, Bill Cosby and Woody Allen, comparisons that were a much better look in 2009 when the book was published than they are today. Grossman had originally wanted Dave Van Ronk to be the low harmony singer, rather than Stookey, but Van Ronk turned him down flat, wanting no part of a Greenwich Village Kingston Trio, though he later said he sometimes looked at his bank account rather wistfully. The group’s name was, apparently, inspired by a line in the old folk song “I Was Born About 10,000 Years Ago”, which was recorded by many people, but most famously by Elvis Presley in the 1970s: [Excerpt: Elvis Presley, “I Was Born About 10,000 Years Ago”] The “Peter, Paul, and Moses” from that song became Peter, Paul and Mary — Stookey started going by his middle name, Paul, on stage, in order to fit the group name, though he still uses Noel in his daily life. While Peter, Paul, and Mary were the front people of the group, there were several other people who were involved in the creative process — the group used a regular bass player, Bill Lee, the father of the filmmaker Spike Lee, who played on all their recordings, as well as many other recordings from Greenwich Village folk musicians. They also had, as their musical director, a man named Milt Okun who came up with their arrangements and helped them choose and shape the material. Grossman shaped this team into a formidable commercial force. Almost everyone who talks about Grossman compares him to Colonel Tom Parker, and the comparison is a reasonable one. Grossman was extremely good at making money for his acts, so long as a big chunk of the money came to him. There’s a story about him signing Odetta, one of the great folk artists of the period, and telling her “you can stay with your current manager, and make a hundred thousand dollars this year, and he’ll take twenty percent, or you can come with me, and make a quarter of a million dollars, but I’ll take fifty percent”. That was the attitude that Grossman took to everyone. He cut himself in to every contract, salami-slicing his artists’ royalties at each stage. But it can’t be denied that his commercial instincts were sound. Peter, Paul, and Mary’s first album was a huge success. The second single from the album, their version of the old Weavers song “If I Had a Hammer”, written by Pete Seeger and Lee Hays, went to number ten on the pop charts: [Excerpt: Peter, Paul and Mary, “If I Had a Hammer”] And the album itself went to number one and eventually went double-platinum — a remarkable feat for a collection of songs that, however prettily arranged, contained a fairly uncompromising selection of music from the folk scene, with songs by Seeger, Dave van Ronk, and Rev. Gary Davis mixing with traditional songs like “This Train” and originals by Stookey and Yarrow. Their second album was less successful at first, with its first two singles flopping. But the third, a pretty children’s song by Yarrow and his friend Leonard Lipton, went to number two on the pop charts and number one on the Adult Contemporary charts: [Excerpt: Peter, Paul, and Mary, “Puff the Magic Dragon”] Incidentally, Leonard Lipton, who wrote that lyric, became independently wealthy from the royalties from the song, and used the leisure that gave him to pursue his passion of inventing 3D projection systems, which eventually made him an even wealthier man — if you’ve seen a 3D film in the cinema in the last couple of decades, it’s almost certainly been using the systems Lipton invented. So Peter, Paul, and Mary were big stars, and having big hits. And Albert Grossman was constantly on the lookout for more material for them. And eventually he found it, and the song that was to make both him, his group, and its writer, very, very rich, in the pages of Broadside magazine. When we left Bob Dylan, he was still primarily a performer, and not really known for his songwriting, but he had already written a handful of songs, and he was being drawn into the more political side of the folk scene. In large part this was because of his girlfriend, Suze Rotolo, with whom Dylan was very deeply in love, and who was a very political person indeed. Dylan had political views, but wasn’t particularly driven by them — Rotolo very much was, and encouraged him to write songs about politics. For much of early 1962, Dylan was being pulled in two directions at once — he was writing songs inspired by Robert Johnson, and trying to adapt Johnson’s style to fit himself, but at the same time he was writing songs like “The Death of Emmett Till”, about the 1955 murder of a Black teenager which had galvanised the civil rights movement, and “The Ballad of Donald White”, about a Black man on death row. Dylan would later be very dismissive of these attempts at topicality, saying “I realize now that my reasons and motives behind it were phony, I didn’t have to write it; I was bothered by many other things that I pretended I wasn’t bothered by, in order to write this song about Emmett Till, a person I never even knew”. But at the time they got him a great deal of attention in the small US folk-music scene, when they were published in magazines like Broadside and Sing Out, which collected political songs. Most of these early songs are juvenilia, with a couple of exceptions like the rather marvellous anti-bomb song “Let Me Die in My Footsteps”, but the song that changed everything for Dylan was a different matter.  “Blowin’ in the Wind” was inspired by the melody of the old nineteenth century song “No More Auction Block”, a song that is often described as a “spiritual”, though in fact it’s a purely secular song about slavery: [Excerpt: Odetta, “No More Auction Block”] That song had seen something of a revival in folk circles in the late fifties, especially because part of its melody had been incorporated into another song, “We Shall Overcome”, which had become an anthem of the civil rights movement when it was revived and adapted by Pete Seeger: [Excerpt: Pete Seeger, “We Shall Overcome”] Dylan took this melody, with its associations with the fight for the rights of Black people, and came up with new lyrics, starting with the line “How many roads must a man walk down, before you call him a man?” He wrote two verses of the song — the first and last verses — in a short burst of inspiration, and a few weeks later came back to it and added another verse, the second, which incorporated allusions to the Biblical prophet Ezekiel, and which is notably less inspired than those earlier verses. In later decades, many people have looked at the lyrics to the song and seen it as the first of what would become a whole subgenre of non-protest protest songs — they’ve seen the abstraction of “How many roads must a man walk down before you call him a man?” as being nice-sounding rhetoric that doesn’t actually mean anything, in much the same way as something like, say, “Another Day in Paradise” or “Eve of Destruction”, songs that make nonspecific complaints about nonspecific bad things. But while “Blowin’ in the Wind” is a song that has multiple meanings and can be applied to multiple situations, as most good songs can, that line was, at the time in which it was written, a very concrete question. The civil rights movement was asking for many things — for the right to vote, for an end to segregation, for an end to police brutality, but also for basic respect and acknowledgment of Black people’s shared humanity. We’ve already heard in a couple of past episodes Big Bill Broonzy singing “When Do I Get to Be Called a Man?”: [Excerpt: Big Bill Broonzy, “When Do I Get to Be Called a Man?”] Because at the time, it was normal for white people to refer to Black men as “boy”. As Dr. Martin Luther King said in his “Letter From Birmingham Jail”, one of the greatest pieces of writing of the twentieth century, a letter in large part about how white moderates were holding Black people back with demands to be “reasonable” and let things take their time: “when you have seen hate-filled policemen curse, kick, brutalize, and even kill your black brothers and sisters with impunity; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society… when your first name becomes“ and here Dr. King uses a racial slur which I, as a white man, will not say, “and your middle name becomes “boy” (however old you are) and your last name becomes “John,” and when your wife and mother are never given the respected title “Mrs.”; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never knowing what to expect next, and plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of “nobodyness”—then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait. There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over and men are no longer willing to be plunged into an abyss of injustice where they experience the bleakness of corroding despair.” King’s great letter was written in 1963, less than a year after Dylan was writing his song but before it became widely known. In the context of 1962, the demand to call a man a man was a very real political issue, not an aphorism that could go in a Hallmark card. Dylan recorded the song in June 1962, during the sessions for his second album, which at the time was going under the working title “Bob Dylan’s Blues”: [Excerpt: Bob Dylan, “Blowin’ in the Wind”] By the time he recorded it, two major changes had happened to him. The first was that Suze Rotolo had travelled to Spain for several months, leaving him bereft — for the next few months, his songwriting took a turn towards songs about either longing for the return of a lost love, like “Tomorrow is a Long Time”, one of his most romantic songs, or about how the protagonist doesn’t even need his girlfriend anyway and she can leave if she likes, see if he cares, like “Don’t Think Twice It’s Alright”. The other change was that Albert Grossman had become his manager, largely on the strength of “Blowin’ in the Wind”, which Grossman thought had huge potential. Grossman signed Dylan up, taking twenty percent of all his earnings — including on the contract with Columbia Records Dylan already had — and got him signed to a new publisher, Witmark Publishing, where the aptly-named Artie Mogull thought that “Blowin’ in the Wind” could be marketed. Grossman took his twenty percent of Dylan’s share of the songwriting money as his commission from Dylan — and fifty percent of Witmark’s share of the money as his commission from Witmark, meaning that Dylan was getting forty percent of the money for writing the songs, while Grossman was getting thirty-five percent. Grossman immediately got involved in the recording of Dylan’s second album, and started having personality clashes with John Hammond. It was apparently Grossman who suggested that Dylan “go electric” for the first time, with the late-1962 single “Mixed-Up Confusion”: [Excerpt: Bob Dylan, “Mixed-Up Confusion”] Neither Hammond nor Dylan liked that record, and it seemed clear for the moment that the way forward for Dylan was to continue in an acoustic folk vein. Dylan was also starting to get inspired more by English folk music, and incorporate borrowings from English music into his songwriting. That’s most apparent in “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall”, written in September 1962. Dylan took the structure of that song from the old English ballad, “Lord Randall”: [Excerpt: Ewan MacColl, “Lord Randall”] He reworked that structure into a song of apocalypse, again full of the Biblical imagery he’d tried in the second verse of  “Blowin’ in the Wind”, but this time more successfully incorporating it: [Excerpt: Bob Dylan, “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall”] His interest in English folk music was to become more important in his songwriting in the following months, as Dylan was about to travel to the UK and encounter the British folk music scene. A TV director called Philip Saville had seen Dylan performing in New York, and had decided he would be perfect for the role of a poet in a TV play he was putting on, Madhouse in Castle Street, and got Dylan flown over to perform in it. Unfortunately, no-one seems to have told Dylan what would be involved in this, and he proved incapable of learning his lines or acting, so the show was rethought — the role of the poet was given to David Warner, later to become one of Britain’s most famous screen actors, and Dylan was cast in a new role as a singer called “Bobby”, who had few or no lines but did get to sing a few songs, including “Blowin’ in the Wind”, which was the first time the song was heard by anyone outside of the New York folk scene. Dylan was in London for about a month, and while he was there he immersed himself in the British folk scene. This scene was in some ways modelled on the American scene, and had some of the same people involved, but it was very different. The initial spark for the British folk revival had come in the late 1940s, when A.L. Lloyd, a member of the Communist Party, had published a book of folk songs he’d collected, along with some Marxist analysis of how folk songs evolved. In the early fifties, Alan Lomax, then in the UK to escape McCarthyism, put Lloyd in touch with Ewan MacColl, a songwriter and performer from Manchester, who we heard earlier singing “Lord Randall”. MacColl, like Lloyd, was a Communist, but the two also shared a passion for older folk songs, and they began recording and performing together, recording traditional songs like “The Handsome Cabin Boy”: [Excerpt: Ewan MacColl and A.L. Lloyd, “The Handsome Cabin Boy”] MacColl and Lloyd latched on to the skiffle movement, and MacColl started his own club night, Ballads and Blues, which tried to push the skifflers in the direction of performing more music based in English traditional music. This had already been happening to an extent with things like the Vipers performing “Maggie May”, a song about a sex worker in Liverpool: [Excerpt: The Vipers Skiffle Group, “Maggie May”] But this started to happen a lot more with MacColl’s encouragement. At one point in 1956, there was even a TV show hosted by Lomax and featuring a band that included Lomax, MacColl, Jim Bray, the bass player from Chris Barber’s band, Shirley Collins — a folk singer who was also Lomax’s partner — and Peggy Seeger, who was Pete Seeger’s sister and who had also entered into a romantic relationship with MacColl, whose most famous song, “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face”, was written both about and for her: [Excerpt: Peggy Seeger, “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face”] It was Seeger who instigated what became the most notable feature at the Ballads and Blues club and its successor the Singer’s Club. She’d burst out laughing when she saw Long John Baldry sing “Rock Island Line”, because he was attempting to sing in an American accent. As someone who had actually known Lead Belly, she found British imitations of his singing ludicrous, and soon there was a policy at the clubs that people would only sing songs that were originally sung with their normal vowel sounds. So Seeger could only sing songs from the East Coast of the US, because she didn’t have the Western vowels of a Woody Guthrie, while MacColl could sing English and Scottish songs, but nothing from Wales or Ireland. As the skiffle craze died down, it splintered into several linked scenes. We’ve already seen how in Liverpool and London it spawned guitar groups like the Shadows and the Beatles, while in London it also led to the electric blues scene. It also led to a folk scene that was very linked to the blues scene at first, but was separate from it, and which was far more political, centred around MacColl. That scene, like the US one, combined topical songs about political events from a far-left viewpoint with performances of traditional songs, but in the case of the British one these were mostly old sea shanties and sailors’ songs, and the ancient Child Ballads, rather than Appalachian country music — though a lot of the songs have similar roots.  And unlike the blues scene, the folk scene spread all over the country. There were clubs in Manchester, in Liverpool (run by the group the Spinners), in Bradford, in Hull (run by the Waterson family) and most other major British cities. The musicians who played these venues were often inspired by MacColl and Lloyd, but the younger generation of musicians often looked askance at what they saw as MacColl’s dogmatic approach, preferring to just make good music rather than submit it to what they saw as MacColl’s ideological purity test, even as they admired his musicianship and largely agreed with his politics. And one of these younger musicians was a guitarist named Martin Carthy, who was playing a club called the King and Queen on Goodge Street when he saw Bob Dylan walk in. He recognised Dylan from the cover of Sing Out! magazine, and invited him to get up on stage and do a few numbers. For the next few weeks, Carthy showed Dylan round the folk scene — Dylan went down great at the venues where Carthy normally played, and at the Roundhouse, but flopped around the venues that were dominated by MacColl, as the people there seemed to think of Dylan as a sort of cut-rate Ramblin’ Jack Elliot, as Elliot had been such a big part of the skiffle and folk scenes. Carthy also taught Dylan a number of English folk songs, including “Lord Franklin”: [Excerpt: Martin Carthy, “Lord Franklin”] and “Scarborough Fair”: [Excerpt: Martin Carthy, “Scarborough Fair”] Dylan immediately incorporated the music he’d learned from Carthy into his songwriting, basing “Bob Dylan’s Dream” on “Lord Franklin”, and even more closely basing “GIrl From the North Country” on “Scarborough Fair”: [Excerpt: Bob Dylan, “Girl From The North Country”] After his trip to London, Dylan went over to Europe to see if he could catch up with Suze, but she had already gone back to New York — their letters to each other crossed in the post. On his return, they reunited at least for a while, and she posed with him for the photo for the cover of what was to be his second album.  Dylan had thought that album completed when he left for England, but he soon discovered that there were problems with the album — the record label didn’t want to release the comedy talking blues “Talking John Birch Society Paranoid Blues”, because they thought it might upset the fascists in the John Birch Society. The same thing would later make sure that Dylan never played the Ed Sullivan Show, because when he was booked onto the show he insisted on playing that song, and so they cancelled the booking. In this case, though, it gave him an excuse to remove what he saw as the weaker songs on the album, including “Tomorrow is a Long Time”, and replace them with four new songs, three of them inspired by traditional English folk songs — “Bob Dylan’s Dream”,  “Girl From the North Country”, and “Masters of War” which took its melody from the old folk song “Nottamun Town” popularised on the British folk circuit by an American singer, Jean Ritchie: [Excerpt: Jean Ritchie, “Nottamun Town”] These new recordings weren’t produced by John Hammond, as the rest of the album was. Albert Grossman had been trying from the start to get total control over Dylan, and didn’t want Hammond, who had been around before Grossman, involved in Dylan’s career. Instead, a new producer named Tom Wilson was in charge. Wilson was a remarkable man, but seemed an odd fit for a left-wing folk album. He was one of the few Black producers working for a major label, though he’d started out as an indie producer. He was a Harvard economics graduate, and had been president of the Young Republicans during his time there — he remained a conservative all his life — but he was far from conservative in his musical tastes. When he’d left university, he’d borrowed nine hundred dollars and started his own record label, Transition, which had put out some of the best experimental jazz of the fifties, produced by Wilson, including the debut albums by Sun Ra: [Excerpt: Sun Ra, “Brainville”] and Cecil Taylor: [Excerpt: Cecil Taylor, “Bemsha Swing”] Wilson later described his first impressions of Dylan: “I didn’t even particularly like folk music. I’d been recording Sun Ra and Coltrane … I thought folk music was for the dumb guys. This guy played like the dumb guys, but then these words came out. I was flabbergasted.” Wilson would soon play a big part in Dylan’s career, but for now his job was just to get those last few tracks for the album recorded. In the end, the final recording session for Dylan’s second album was more than a year after the first one, and it came out into a very different context from when he’d started recording it. Because while Dylan was putting the finishing touches on his second album, Peter Paul and Mary were working on their third, and they were encouraged by Grossman to record three Bob Dylan songs, since that way Grossman would make more money from them. Their version of “Blowin’ in the Wind” came out as a single a few weeks after The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan came out, and sold 300,000 copies in the first week: [Excerpt: Peter, Paul, and Mary, “Blowin’ in the Wind”] The record went to number two on the charts, and their followup, “Don’t Think Twice it’s Alright”, another Dylan song, went top ten as well.  “Blowin’ in the Wind” became an instant standard, and was especially picked up by Black performers, as it became a civil rights anthem. Mavis Staples of the Staple Singers said later that she was astonished that a white man could write a line like “How many roads must a man walk down before you call him a man?”, saying “That’s what my father experienced” — and the Staple Singers recorded it, of course: [Excerpt: The Staple Singers, “Blowin’ in the Wind”] as did Sam Cooke: [Excerpt: Sam Cooke, “Blowin’ in the Wind”] And Stevie Wonder: [Excerpt: Stevie Wonder, “Blowin’ in the Wind”] But the song’s most important performance came from Peter, Paul and Mary, performing it on a bill with Dylan, Odetta, Joan Baez, and Mahalia Jackson in August 1963, just as the song had started to descend the charts. Because those artists were the entertainment for the March on Washington, in which more than a quarter of a million people descended on Washington both to support President Kennedy’s civil rights bill and to speak out and say that it wasn’t going far enough. That was one of the great moments in American political history, full of incendiary speeches like the one by John Lewis: [Excerpt: John Lewis, March on Washington speech] But the most memorable moment at that march  came when Dr. King was giving his speech. Mahalia Jackson shouted out “Tell them about the dream, Martin”, and King departed from his prepared words and instead improvised based on themes he’d used in other speeches previously, coming out with some of the most famous words ever spoken: [Excerpt: Martin Luther King, “I Have a Dream”] The civil rights movement was more than one moment, however inspiring, and white people like myself have a tendency to reduce it just to Dr. King, and to reduce Dr. King just to those words — which is one reason why I quoted from Letter From Birmingham Jail earlier, as that is a much less safe and canonised piece of writing. But it’s still true to say that if there is a single most important moment in the history of the post-war struggle for Black rights, it was that moment, and because of “Blowin’ in the Wind”, both Dylan and Peter, Paul and Mary were minor parts of that event. After 1963, Peter, Paul and Mary quickly became passe with the British Invasion, only having two more top ten hits, one with a novelty song in 1967 and one with “Leaving on a Jet Plane” in 1969. They split up in 1970, and around that time Yarrow was arrested and convicted for a sexual offence involving a fourteen-year-old girl, though he was later pardoned by President Carter. The group reformed in 1978 and toured the nostalgia circuit until Mary’s death in 2009. The other two still occasionally perform together, as Peter and Noel Paul. Bob Dylan, of course, went on to bigger things after “Blowin’ in the Wind” suddenly made him into the voice of a generation — a position he didn’t ask for and didn’t seem to want. We’ll be hearing much more from him. And we’ll also be hearing more about the struggle for Black civil rights, as that’s a story, much like Dylan’s, that continues to this day.

Noel “Paul” Stookey of the iconic folk trio Peter, Paul and Mary has produced an album showcasing musicians who focus on social change, the mission of a nonprofit that Stookey founded, called Music to Life. We hear from Stookey, who lives in Maine, about his work in promoting social activism through music. Two Maine-based activist-artists join him,and we’ll hear some examples of their music.

Noel “Paul” Stookey of the iconic folk trio Peter, Paul and Mary has produced an album showcasing musicians who focus on social change, the mission of a nonprofit that Stookey founded, called Music to Life. We hear from Stookey, who lives in Maine, about his work in promoting social activism through music. Two Maine-based activist-artists join him,and we’ll hear some examples of their music.

In this week's episode, professor Sarah Stookey talks about her Practice on teaching for a practitioner's "voice": not as a singing coach, but a bolder, broader thinking coach.

Because it's the 4th of July week, we're taking you back in history on the Jerry Springer podcast to the day Peter Paul and Mary's, Paul, visited our show and talked with Jerry. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

We have another wonderful all music edition to bring you on Episode 518 of Folk Roots Radio. We're continuing our focus on Covid-19 lockdown tunes, alongside some great musical social commentary inspired by the Black Lives Matter protests that have been taking place across the US, and now across the world - after the tragic death of George Floyd. We've subtitled this episode the Better Times Will Come edition as we put out a special shoutout to Janis Ian and her wonderful Better Times Will Come project. So join us for new music from Janis Ian, Rising Appalachia, Fresh Breath, Crys Matthews & Heather Mae, Rube & Rake, Scott Cook, Stacey McNeill & Jonathan Smith, Ellis Delaney, Tom Prasada-Rao, Heather Pierson, Ernest Troost, The Treeline, John McCutcheon, Cris Cuddy, Olguita Alvarez and Noel "Paul" Stookey & Friends. Check out the full playlist on the website at https://folkrootsradio.com.

Growing up, Liz Stookey Sunde (daughter of Noel PAUL Stookey, of the famed folk trio, Peter, Paul & Mary) was profoundly influenced by the music her father was playing, the impact he had on audiences across the globe, and the social activism in which he was deeply involved. Liz is carrying on this legacy, combining music and activism as co-founder of their non-profit, Music to Life. Liz and her father believe that music, of all kinds, can serve as a catalyst and accelerator for social change and empowerment; as a tool to educate, recruit and mobilize people around issues. Listen to this episode of the Changemakers Playground to learn all about Music to Life and how they're creating social justice through music!

Two guys with minimal experience with Lent talk about how it's important to lean into Lent as a spiritual practice. We talk about some of its meanings and ancient background as well as how it can go beyond just giving up chocolate for a month.   Song: "Psalm 88" by Collin McSweeney & Zak Kratzer   Calendar by Laurence H. Stookey:  https://www.amazon.com/dp/0687011361/ref=cm_sw_r_tw_dp_U_x_3quFCb2QRD4C5   Dictionary of Biblical Imagery: https://www.amazon.com/dp/0830814515/ref=cm_sw_r_tw_dp_U_x_FruFCbZBKXYXK 

Episode 41: Jeff Stookey; Historical Fiction; 1920's In This Episode, You’ll Hear: (Podcast run time 37 minutes)   :45 - Introduction to Jeff Stookey 3:57 - Jeff talks about the start of his writing journey 6:35- Jeff shares the inspiration for his novel series 7:10 - Vikki & Jeff talk about his publishing journey 10:04 - Vikki asks about Jeff’s cover art on his books 11:58- Jeff & Vikki go deeper into the inspiration of Jeff’s books series & current event parallels  18:46 - Jeff & Vikki dive deeper into the history of the KKK in the Pacific Northwest & that theme in his work  23:00 - Jeff talks about the theme in his work about the dangers for gay men in the 1920s  25:22 - Vikki & Jeff explore his character’s view of current events in the Pacific Northwest today 27:57 - Jeff reads from Dangerous Medicine   Connect with Jeff Stookey : Jeff’s website:  https://jeffstookey.com Jeff’s books on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_2?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=Jeff+Stookey   Podcast Music Credits: Title: Amazing Plan by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/   Thanks For Listening Thanks for listening!. If you have something you’d like to share with me, please connect with us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or our website. Write a review on iTunes.

Check out the complete transcript on The Sales Game Changers Podcast webite. Jason Stookey is the vice president of partner development for the International Legal Technology Association, also known as ILTA. He's a sales and business development professional with more than 18 years of experience in the tradeshow and event industry with a proven track record as an achiever in developing strategic and profitablerelationships. 22,000 members strong serving CIO, IT leaders typically in law firms, corporate council and the like. He also ran sales and business development for the National Association of Broadcasters, the NAB. Find Jason on LinkedIN!

Noel Paul Stookey - of the 60's folk trio, Peter, Paul & Mary, and Jerry Springer have teamed up to find Cincinnati's most talented activist songwriters.Finalists participate in a special podcast, hosted by Jerry Springer, and including special guest Noel Paul Stookey and his daughter, Liz Stookey Sunde.Organized by the national charity Music 2 Life, Cincinnati's Activist Musician Talent Search attracted dozens of local artists.  Representing diverse genres, these artists have formed creative, music-driven concepts around a multitude of issues that challenge Cincinnati including: gun violence, women's issues, environmental devastation, homelessness and drug abuse. According to Sunde, Music2Life's vision is to encourage these artists as change agents and help them connect them with nonprofits, offering their music to help raise awareness, alleviate suffering and empower the most vulnerable citizens.  A single grand prize winner will receive $5k for their musical change concept and $5k in technical assistance from Music2Life; remaining finalists will receive cash awards for their music and social justice efforts.Review Panelists for this activist musician search included: Noel Paul Stookey, Bootsy Collins, Ed Sawicki (Cincy Blues Society), Courtney Phoenicia (Cincy Music), Ashley Maclin (WIZF FM) and Clara Stryker (Inhaler Radio).The four Finalists are: Casey Campbell & Krystal Peterson (Americana; new soundtrack for civil rights), K-drama - Regis Jones (Rap/Hip Hop; youth empowerment/anti-violence), Sean Geil & the Tillers (Folk/Americana; environment), and Jordana Greenberg (Americana/Folk/Classical; suicide prevention).This inspiring event includes a performance from Stookey (including a duet with Springer), reflections on music's power to make change, and lively musical and concept presentations from the new award winning artists. Donations are gratefully accepted to support these and other national activist artists through Music to Life: gofundme.com/musictolife.Music to Life has spent years developing activism through music by facilitating creative partnerships with nonprofits and artists. While Cincinnati was part of Peter, Paul & Mary's tour circuit, this visit launches Music to Life's talent search to build a network of activist artists around the country. "I grew up in the midwest", says Stookey who went to highschool and college in Michigan, "Cincinnati was a 'welcome home' stop for me on the Peter, Paul and Mary tours.  I'm not surprised to find such talent and social consciousness here.”Jerry gives some perspective on the optimism that began the 60's and the tumultuous events that followed. How Peter, Paul, & Mary brought social justice and anti-war music to main street. The impact of music on our culture. Introduction to Noel "Paul" Stookey.Noel performs "One And Many", "Impeachable", and "Blowing In the Wind" a duet with Jerry. He discusses the power of music, vulnerability, and the major seventh chord. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Elizabeth and Noel Stookey discussion by Discussion by Dennis and Phil

Betty and Noel Stookey, who have been married for over 50 years, together founded "One Light, Many Candles." They produce and perform multifaith presentations combining spoken word and music—both Noel’s compositions and indigenous music from various cultures. Betty is an ordained United Church of Christ minister who served as chaplain at Northfield Mount Hermon School (1997-2005), where she became aware of the need for greater spiritual inclusivity among the culturally diverse student body. Noel was the Paul in the iconic folk music trio Peter, Paul and Mary, whose engagement was central to the antiwar and civil rights movements of the 60s and 70s. We spoke about their spiritual histories, the genesis of “One Light, Many Candles,” the difference between interfaith and multifaith and more. Learn more about Betty and Noel Stookey here: http://onelightmanycandles.org/

Recorded live at Stookey’s Club Moderne on Bush Street at Taylor in San Francisco! Join us for the last story in season 1, it’s a story about a bitter musical talent who had a habit of pushing people around, or did, until he met a particular woman in the play “Chance Encounter.” Our play begins at the end of the night in a club, rather like this one, the band is packing up after a long night… This season is dedicated to my parents, Bob and Mary Louise, but particularly my mother who instilled in me a love of creepy tales. Writer/Director/Producer: Aimee Pavy Music: The Kurt Ribak Trio and the piece "Prelude to a B Movie" Narrator: Josh Horowitz Musician: Scott Louis Buddy: Brett Stillo Singer: Audra Wolfmann Cop: Scott Louis Samantha: Audra Wolfmann Cover Art: Jeff Heermann Logo Design: Michael Dern * https://www.facebook.com/kurt.ribak.trio * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i-BY8FbRz08 * http://www.stookeysclubmoderne.com Thank you for listening and supporting audio drama podcasting! Find us on iTunes, Podchaser, Stitcher, TuneIn, Spotify, wherever you find podcasts. If you enjoy our plays, please SUBSCRIBE and leave your review on iTunes or wherever you listen to your podcasts. And please drop us a line via email at twelvechimesradio@gmail.com and check out our website www.twelvechimesradio.com. And thank you for listening!

We're joined this episode by Paul Stookey of Peter, Paul and Mary.Their group, which carried on the tradition of roots music from people like Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger and the Weavers, moved folk music into the mainstream during the 1960s and 70s ... See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Singer/songwriter Noel Paul Stookey has been altering both the musical and ethical landscape of this country and the world for decades—both as the “Paul” of the legendary Peter, Paul and Mary and as an independent musician who passionately believes in bringing the spiritual into the practice of daily life. Funny, irreverently reverent, thoughtful, compassionate—passionate—Stookey's vocal sound is known all across this land: from the “Wedding Song” to “In These Times.”  Read more, click here. We are honored to have Paul join us for this episode.

Nominated for a 2014 New England Music Award, Kate Callahan, Connecticut's “Best Singer-Songwriter 2013” has three albums including her recent release Two Doors, which was featured on WNPR's Where We Live.  Callahan's music feels soulful and she's unapologetically optimistic in concert. WNPR host Colin McEnroe praised a recent performance, saying, “Kate Callahan is the only performer I've ever seen who occasionally seems to be channeling something vaster and far more ancient than herself, something more easily understood by Emerson than by any modern person. Kate's credits include appearances at the Falcon Ridge Folk Festival Emerging Artists Showcase, the New Haven Festival of Arts and Ideas, and the CT Folk Festival. She has opened shows for folk legends Judy Collins and Noel Paul Stookey (Peter, Paul, and Mary), troubadours Aztec Two-Step, John Gorka, Mustard's Retreat, and the late Bill Morrissey. She has also shared stages with folk-rock artists Rachael Sage and Regina Spektor. Stookey calls Callahan "real" and says her lyrics are "Zen-like." Kate joins Take 2 Radio Music for a chat and music on Wednesday, September 3rd at 3pm eastern!

Manchester Symphony Orchestra and Chorale presents a special Sunday afternoon concert on February 7th at 3:00 PM in Bailey Auditorium, Manchester High School, 134 Middle Turnpike East, Manchester. The Manchester Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Lewis J. Buckley performs The Composer is Dead, based on a book by popular children’s author Lemony Snicket. Also on the program are Bartók’s Concerto for Viola, with soloist Andrew Tang, and Celebration, by 17-year old composer Byron Perpetua.

This is a late tribute to Mary Travers of the folk group Peter, Paul & Mary. All songs performed by the group. I Dig Rock And Roll Music If I Had My Way If I Had A Hammer One Tin Soldier Blowin' In The Wind Where Have All The Flowers Gone I'd Like To Teach The World To Sing Leaving On A Jet Plane 500 Miles Day Is Done Puff The Magic Dragon