YMMV / Peter, Paul and Mary

• Awesome Music: 50 years worth. Take your pick.
• Covered Up: About half of the act's songs were covers, leading to a lot of this. In fact, before they helped him achieve mainstream success, many assumed that their Bob Dylan covers were originals.
  • They have been on the receiving end as well, such as this recent cover of "Early in the Morning" by the Avett Brothers.
• Funny Moments
  • Paul's standup routine on In Concert, especially the sound-effects.
  • Paul's deliberately mumbled Donovan impression on "I Dig Rock n' Roll Music."
  • "Right Field" is easily one of the silliest songs they ever recorded.
  • As is their cover of "Car-Car."
• Harsher in Hindsight: Mary Travers' last verse in "Freight Train": "When I die, please bury me deep/Down at the end of Bleecker Street." Not only was she the first of the trio to die, but Bleecker Street was where she grew up, making this line eerily specific.
• Mexicans Love Speedy Gonzales: "I Dig Rock N Roll Music" is a good example of how this trope can apply Insult Backfire. Noel Paul Stookey wrote it as a satire on how he felt rock & roll was all style over substance, and that fans of rock & roll liked it because it was popular; not because it was good music. Ironically, the song became one of their biggest hits, charting number 9 on the Billboard Hot 100 pop charts and has been since included on many of "The Best of '60s Rock!" or "The Best of Hippie Rock" compilation albums. It also didn't help that one of the bands they ridiculed, The Mamas & the Papas, ended up covering the song.
• Misaimed Fandom: Because their most popular song was a children's song, and none of their other songs are necessarily child-unfriendly, they're sometimes mistaken for a children's act. Then again, they did record two albums specifically for children under the title Peter, Paul, and Mommy.
• Moment of Awesome: Within the span of weeks in 1963, their cover of "Blowin' In The Wind" had a direct hand in two of the most important parts of American history, bringing Bob Dylan into the mainstream and accompanying Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s legendary "I Have A Dream Speech" during the March On Washington. It really doesn't get more awesome than that.
• Most Wonderful Sound
  • Whenever they harmonized.
  • Paul's automobile sound effects.
• Signature Song: If you're a liberal, "If I Had a Hammer." If not, "Puff, The Magic Dragon."
• Spiritual Successor: To the folk revival of the late 1940s started by acts like Pete Seeger and The Weavers, which had fizzled out in the early '50s when conservative America dismissed their overtly left-wing lyrics.
• Sweet Dreams Fuel: Everything about their music, even their more cynical songs, just makes you happy to be alive.
• Tear Jerker: This act could bring on the waterworks just as well as it could bring about social progress.
  • "Puff, the Magic Dragon" is by far the most infamous.
  • "Leaving on a Jet Plane."
  • "Day Is Done." It even begins with the line "Tell me why you're crying, my son."
  • Most of their final album, In These Times, if only for the Reality Subtext that it would be Mary Travers' final album with the trio. Their once-angelic voices now weather-worn with age only serves to make the sad songs even sadder.
    • "Don't Laugh at Me," which moved people enough for Peter Yarrow to build an entire anti-bullying campaign based around it.
    • "It's Magic."
  • "Where Have All the Flowers Gone?"
  • "Hayo, Haya" from the 1988 Holiday Concert – a Hanukkah song expressing the pain of the Jewish people under Antiochus IV's reign of terror.

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