Peter Paul and Mary

Peter, Paul and Mary – Album 1700 (1967/2014)
DSF Stereo DSD64/2.82MHz | Time – 40:19 minutes | 1,59 GB | Genre: Folk, Rock
FLAC (tracks) 24-bit/88,2 kHz | Time – 40:19 min | 729 MB
Official Digital Download – Source: AcousticSounds | Front Cover | © Warner Bros. Records Inc./Analogue Productions XAPP993D64

Arguably Peter, Paul and Mary’s best record since their debut LP, Album 1700 (named for its catalog number) found the trio confidently incorporating the stylistic developments first introduced on Album while growing enormously as songwriters. As usual, their songwriting peers were included, as the album led off with Eric Andersen’s “Rolling Home,” followed by John Denver’s “Leaving On A Jet Plane” (a recording that would find belated success in a couple of years) and also featured “Bob Dylan’s Dream,” another Freewheelin’ alumnus.
But eight of the 12 songs were credited to the singers, singly, or in combination with co-writers. And they were of unusual quality. Yarrow’s “The Great Mandella (The Wheel of Life)” was an agonizing anthem about the struggle and death of a pacifist. The song not only expressed what many in the anti-war movement felt, but predicted much of the cynicism and despair they would come to experience.

Stookey’s “The House Song” was an extended metaphor that began a journey of self-discovery for the songwriter. “The House Song’ was a curiosity for me because it truly began as a song about a house and then transformed itself,” Stookey recalled. “It began walking, it became the shell of my life, and it was a beginning, really. The House Song was very significant for me because it was the beginning of telling the truth about my life, which then required me, in a sense, to take seven years off to implement because prior to that I had not been playing with a straight deck.” Such songs were deeply felt statements, and they were only the highlights of an album that also boasted Yarrow’s “Weep For Jamie” and concluded with the stirring, group-written (with Dave Dixon and PP&M on-stage bassist Dick Kniss) “The Song Is Love.”

Yarrow identified one important new name in the credits as a force in achieving the album’s artistic success: chief engineer Phil Ramone. “It is only, really, from my perspective, [with] our association with Phil that there [occurred] a kind of artistic flow and flex that united the album so it felt of one piece, even though each song sounded different,” Yarrow explained. “Phil would make each song its own sonic world. He was officially only the engineer, but he was as much the producer as he ever was. He would suggest ideas that were very, very unusual. In a song for instance like “Weep For Jamie,” he would get a little religious pump organ that would have this textural energy that was so strong, and he would set the echoes in a way that was masterful.”
He adds, “It was just so present and so rich and so spatial, the echo that he created, and he was such a catalyst and such an innovative person. His treatment of echo, for instance, on ‘The House Song’ was just extraordinary. The Paul Winter Consort joined Noel on that. We for the first time used percussion on that album. There was a group called the Paupers, and their percussion player played on some of the songs, like ‘If I Had Wings’. This was a real breakthrough album for us. It completely realized what the experiments were about, and it was really something which, when guided by Phil and led by Phil, really reached a new artistic high for Peter, Paul and Mary: I’d say the second wave of our recording experience was personified by that album. In terms of recordings in the studio, no doubt there was a great leap that we made for Album 1700.”

Album 1700 entered the Billboard Top LP’s chart for the week ending September 2, 1967, and peaked at #15 on October 21. It remained in the charts 28 weeks, falling out of the list in March 1968. Then it returned to the charts in July, stayed for two months and dropped off again. Peter, Paul and Mary were also nominated for the 1967 Grammy Award for Best Folk Performance for Album 1700.

(more…)

Read more

Peter Paul and Mary – In Concert (1964/2014)
DSF Stereo DSD64/2.82MHz | Time – 01:23:21 minutes | 3,29 GB | Genre: Folk, Rock
FLAC (tracks) 24-bit/88,2 kHz | Time – 01:23:21 min | 1,47 GB
Official Digital Download – Source: AcousticSounds | Front Cover | © Warner Bros. Records Inc./Analogue Productions XAPF1555D64

The In Concert set, which was released on July 24 (the second day of the 1964 Newport Folk Festival), gave a good idea of the on-stage abilities of an act that had become a worldwide success. A trade ad for the album noted that, since forming, the trio had played over 400 concerts to more than two million people.

More than half of the 18 selections had not appeared previously on a Peter, Paul and Mary album. And the nearly 82-minute running time allowed space for the whole range of the group’s talents, from its mastery of traditional and thoughtful new material to Stookey’s previously unrecorded comic sensibility.
“I think that the In Concert album in it’s own way had something very, very special,” said Peter Yarrow. “There was a sense of really being there at the concert, and there really was a sense of capitulation of the flow of the concert. It had a point of view. It had a consistency in sound terms.”

At a time when double-LP sets were practically unheard of, In Concert peaked at #4 in September of 1965, staying on the charts for 54 weeks, and becoming Peter, Paul and Mary’s fourth straight gold record in the process.

(more…)

Read more

Peter, Paul and Mary – In The Wind (1963) [Audio Fidelity 2014]
PS3 Rip | SACD ISO | DSD64 2.0 > 1-bit/2.8224 MHz | 38:02 minutes | Scans included | 1,53 GB
or FLAC(converted with foobar2000 to tracks) 24bit/88,2 kHz | Full Scans included | 778 MB
Mastered by Steve Hoffman | Audio Fidelity # AFZ-181

Their third recording was one of the group’s stronger outings, even if it confirms their status as folk popularizers rather than musical innovators. In particular, this record was essential to boosting the profile of Bob Dylan, including their huge hit cover of “Blowin’ in the Wind,” their Top Ten version of “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right,” and the bluesy “Quit Your Lowdown Ways,” which Dylan himself would not release in the ’60s (although his version finally came out on The Bootleg Series). “Stewball,” “All My Trials,” and “Tell It on the Mountain” were other highlights of their early repertoire, and the dramatic, strident, but inspirational “Very Last Day” is one of the best original tunes the group ever did.

(more…)

Read more

Peter, Paul And Mary – Peter, Paul And Mary (1962) [Audio Fidelity 2014]
PS3 Rip | SACD ISO | DSD64 2.0 > 1-bit/2.8224 MHz | 33:51 minutes | Scans included | 1,38 GB
or FLAC(converted with foobar2000 to tracks) 24bit/88,2 kHz | Full Scans included | 683 MB
Mastered by Steve Hoffman | Audio Fidelity # AFZ-161

The debut album by Peter, Paul & Mary is still one of the best albums to come out of the 1960s folk music revival, a beautifully harmonized collection of the best songs that the group knew, stirring in its sensibilities and its haunting melodies, crossing between folk, children’s songs, and even gospel (“If I Had My Way”), and light-hearted just where it needed to be, with the song “Lemon Tree,” which became their first hit single, and earnest where it had to be, particularly on “If I Had a Hammer.” Ironically, the trio’s version of the latter song, which Pete Seeger and Lee Hayes had written in the early days of the Weavers’ history, helped push popular folk music in a more political direction at the time, but it was another song in their repertory, Seeger’s “Where Have All the Flowers Gone,” that also helped indirectly jump start that movement. The group had performed it in Boston at a concert attended by the Kingston Trio, who immediately returned to New York and cut their own version, which charted as a single early in 1962. Other highlights include “It’s Raining” and “500 Miles.” Peter, Paul & Mary, which hit the top spot on the album charts as part of a 185-week run, is the purest of the trio’s albums, laced with innocent good spirits and an optimism that remains infectious even 40 years later.

(more…)

Read more