Peter Yarrow, the soothing voice and songwriter behind the 1960s folk trio Peter, Paul, and Mary, who wrote their biggest hit, “Puff the Magic Dragon,” died on January 7, following a four-year battle with bladder cancer. He was 86.
“Our fearless dragon is tired and has entered the last chapter of his magnificent life,” Yarrow’s daughter Bethany said in a statement. “The world knows Peter Yarrow the iconic folk activist, but the human being behind the legend is every bit as generous, creative, passionate, playful, and wise as his lyrics suggest.”
Born May 31, 1938, in the Upper West Side of Manhattan in New York City, Yarrow started performing in New York City folk clubs after graduating from Cornell University, when he met future bandmate, Kentucky transplant Mary Travers, who then suggested Noel Paul Stookey join their group.
Since 1961, Yarrow’s tenor, Travers’ contralto, and Noel Paul Stookey’s baritone delivered an irreplaceable harmony to Peter, Paul, and Mary’s music, spanning the trio’s 1962 eponymous debut and Movin’ from 1963 with their hit “Puff the Magic Dragon,” which went to No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100, through their thirteenth and final album In These Times in 2003.
When Yarrow’s roommate Leonard Lipton came across the 1936 poem, “The Tale of Custard The Dragon,” by American poet Ogden Nash, he was convinced that he could write a better “dragon” poem and started typing his story on Yarrow’s typewriter. When Yarrow came across Lipton’s poem, it inspired him to write “Puff the Magic Dragon,” which he brought to the group years later to record.
In 1978, Puff the Magic Dragon became a movie with Puff voiced by screen legend Burgess Meredith and the story of a little boy who couldn’t speak for a long time until a magical dragon helped him find his voice. Scholastic also released the first “Puff the Magic Dragon” children’s book in 2007 with illustration by French artist Eric Puybaret, using the lyrics from the Yarrow and Lipton-penned song as the story.
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[RELATED: The Innocent Tale Behind “Puff the Magic Dragon” by Peter, Paul and Mary]
After its release, the song was later covered by everyone from Bing Crosby, The Andrews Sisters Jackie De Shannon, Connie Francis, and the Irish Rovers.
Though “Puff the Magic Dragon” was initially considered a euphemism for smoking weed, Lipton, who died in 2022 at 82 went on to produce 25 films and create patents under his name—including his invention of the “stereoscopic technique” of filming movies in REAL 3D used in the 1980s, and CrystalEyes, the first shuttering eyewear for stereoscopic displays, in 1996—denied that the song was about drugs. “Puff” was more innocent and centered around childhood innocence, and not getting high.
“It was Pete Seeger and ‘Michael, Row Your Boat Ashore,’” said Lipton, “not ‘One Toke Over the Line Sweet Jesus.’”
Throughout his career, Yarrow also co-wrote the majority of Peter, Paul, and Mary’s songs, including “Day Is Done” and “The Great Mandala,” and many more with Paul Stookey, the surviving member of the group, and = Travers, who died in 2009 at age 72.
Peter, Paul, and Mary had 12 Top 40 hits, including their cover of Bob Dylan‘s “Blowin’ in the Wind,” which peaked at No. 2, and John Denver’s “Leavin’ on a Jet Plane” in 1969, which went to No. 1.
After disbanding in 1970, the three went their separate ways and into solo careers, with Yarrow releasing his debut Yarrow in 1972 through The Peter Yarrow Sing-Along Special in 2010. In 2020, Yarrow also appeared on Jim Stanard’s Colors Outside the Lines album on the tracks “Home” and “Arkansas” with daughter Bethany Yarrow.
“I was five months older than Peter, who became my creative, irrepressible, spontaneous, and musical younger brother, yet at the same time, I grew to be grateful for, and to love, the mature-beyond-his-years wisdom and inspiring guidance he shared with me like an older brother,” said Stookey in a statement. “Politically astute and emotionally vulnerable, perhaps Peter was both of the brothers I never had … and I shall deeply miss both of him.”
In his later life, Yarrow was performing with daughter Bethany and cellist Rufus Cappadocia as the trio Peter, Bethany, and Rufus and released Puff & Other Family Classics in 2008.
“I believe folk music has had a positive effect on the decency, humanity, and empathy of society,” said Yarrow in 2008. “It’s about asserting the decency in human beings and the best way to do that is through the arts because logic won’t prevail. That is what Peter, Paul, and Mary have done for almost 50 years. We’ve had a huge audience some of whom did not agree with our politics but were touched with the human essence of our songs.”
He added, “I believe folk music has had a positive effect on the decency, humanity, and empathy of society.”
Yarrow is survived by his wife Mary Beth, daughter Bethany, son Christopher, and granddaughter Valentina.
Photo: Peter Yarrow performs at the Music Center in Los Angeles, February 1980. (Sherry Rayn Barnett/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images)
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