Come mothers and fathers throughout the land
And don’t criticize what you can’t understand
Your sons and your daughters are beyond your command
Your old road is rapidly aging
Please get out of the new one if you can’t lend a hand
For the times, they are a changin’
Peter, Paul & Mary are hard to beat.
You can see it in that performance of “Early in the Morning,” but Mary Travers’ power really comes through in this clip of “If I Had a Hammer.”
It’s no wonder the camera spends most of the song focused in tight on her face. She’s a gorgeous blonde, of course, but more than that, she’s a powerhouse of confidence and vitality, which electrifies her physical beauty tenfold. And the voice, of course, pushing aside Yarrow’s weaker tenor. By the time they hit the final verse (1:30), she’s absolutely beaming with strength and joy and power and vamping sexuality.
Even focusing on the music itself, I’m struck too by the vigor, the urgency of these performances. Born at least a decade after their heyday, I met them, with John Denver, Anne Murray, Jim Croce, et al., as my mother’s easy listening music, played on Sundays while I was supposed to be dusting the living room. Even later, as I picked up a greatest hits album for my own collection, PP&M seemed mostly about the soaring harmonies.
But as with Croce, as I’ve discovered, it isn’t all pretty melodies. A lot of this is hard-driving, up-tempo, rhythmic stuff, ripped through in 2 minutes or less. The acoustic guitar work is hardly virtuoso, but it chug-a-chugs like a train, to borrow a metaphor from Johnny Cash. It rocks surprisingly hard.
In summary: Well done, oldie oldsters. I like your music.
