Mary Travers Funeral

Mary Travers funeral to be held today. Mary Travers a well known singer and member of folk group Peter, Paul And Mary is dead. She was 72.

Mary Allin Travers, a famous American Pop singer of early 1960’s died with leukemia at the age of 72. She died on September 16, 2009 in at Danbury Hospital in Danbury. She was surfing from leukemia since 2005. Bone-marrow transplant was successful apparently but she died with complications arising from chemotherapy . According to some resources her funeral will be held on 18 September.

Born in 1936 Mary Allin Travers was a well known singer-songwriter and member of the folk group Peter, Paul and Mary, along with Peter Yarrow and Noel "Paul" Stookey. Peter, Paul and Mary was one of the most successful folk-singing groups of the 1960s.

Almost unique among the folk musicians who emerged from the Greenwich Village scene in the early 1960s, Travers actually came from the neighborhood.

The band’s publicist, Heather Lylis, says Travers died at Danbury Hospital in Connecticut on Wednesday. She had battled leukemia on and off since 1995.

Travers joined forces with Peter Yarrow and Noel Paul Stookey in the early 1960s, and together the trio collected five Grammy Awards for their three-part harmony on signature songs like “Leaving on a Jet Plane,” ‘‘Puff (The Magic Dragon),” and “Blowin’ in the Wind.”

While in high school, she joined The Song Swappers, which sang backup for Pete Seeger when Folkways Records reissued a union song collection, Talking Union, in 1955. The Song Swappers recorded a total of four albums for Folkways in 1955, all with Seeger.

Travers had regarded her singing as a hobby and was shy about it, but was encouraged by fellow musicians. Travers also was in the cast of the Broadway-theatre show, The Next President.

The group Peter, Paul and Mary was formed in 1961, and they were an immediate success. They shared a manager, Albert Grossman, with Bob Dylan and so were able to make Dylan's songs appreciated by people who had hitherto been put off by his nasal whine.

Their success with Dylan's Don't Think Twice Its Alright aided Dylan's Freewheelin' album into the Top 30.

Mary Travers at her days: