Photo by Kevin Mazur
Photo by Kevin Mazur
Joyous Noel
Noel Paul Stookey was given a new name and began an amazing musical ride 50 years ago. This folk icon and Maine treasure has been singing ever since—honestly, beautifully, and joyfully.
Listen to any early Peter, Paul and Mary tune, and it’s like time travel. Wherever you were in your life when you first heard the song pours back into you like the tide.
While all music can evoke memories, PP&M classics—songs like “If I Had A Hammer,” “Blowin’ in the Wind,” or “Puff, the Magic Dragon”—dug deep when they debuted, and still do, nearly 50 years later.
But to really hear what this legendary trio achieved requires two speakers. The group’s manager did something groundbreaking: He decided to mix them in stereo—with Peter and Paul (whose real name was Noel) on hard left and right, and Mary in the center. Instead of the melange of voices that played over monophonic radios of the time, modern earphones reveal the dance: You can clearly follow Mary’s gutsy alto, Peter’s heartbreaking tenor, and Noel’s wide-ranging baritone, alone, together, seamlessly swapping the lead. Their voices, one discovers, were strikingly unique, but, like carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen, the possibilities together were organic and endless.
Noel Stookey, Peter Yarrow, and Mary Travers enjoyed phenomenal success together in the ’60s, earning a place in history not only for their music—including 13 gold or platinum albums and five Grammys—but also for their leadership as civil rights activists. After nine intense years together, the group disbanded in 1970, and Stookey and his young family moved to Blue Hill, Maine.
After an eight-year hiatus—during which time Stookey wrote “The Wedding Song”—Peter, Paul and Mary reunited. For over 40 years, they performed frequently and continued recording until Mary Travers’ death in 2009.
Noel Stookey has never let any grass grow under his feet between gigs. Feeling that “G-O-D” had given him “The Wedding Song,” he created a foundation and donated the song’s royalties, some $2 million over the years, to everything from disaster relief to helping start WERU community radio. He’s been involved with bringing music to hospitalized and special needs kids through a group called Hugworks, produced albums for Maine artists David Mallett and Gordon Bok, and is about to release a new album of his own, his 48th.
You were born in Maryland in 1937. What was your childhood like?
I grew up in a rural town called Dorsey, about halfway between Baltimore and Washington. My dad was an executive for the Gates Rubber Company. My childhood had music in it: My dad was a former drummer in a band and my mom had a lovely voice. When we travelled together—I was an only child and went on many business trips with dad and mom—we would sing and listen to Arthur Godfrey play ukulele.
An only child? Were you spoiled?
I was “unconditionaled.” I didn’t get everything I wanted and my family was not rich by any means, but we had a good relationship, my mom and dad and I, and anything that I was interested in I could pretty much find out about.
In high school you had a band called the Birds of Paradise that appeared on TV.
We did, we did. We were on The Ed Mc-Kenzie Show out of Detroit, WXYZ. I don’t know if it was because we were really that good or because our history teacher was standing under the applause meter, but we managed to win the grand prize on that show, doing “She’s a Real Humdinger” by The Cadillacs. A bunch of white boys with crew neck sweaters singing rhythm and blues. But we had a lot of passion; we really loved the material.
You attended Michigan State for a time, and then your family moved to Pennsylvania. How did you end up in New York City?
I worked at a camera shop, and won third place in a national advertising contest for Charles Bronson’s “Man with a Camera.” I won 1,400-and-something dollars’ worth of flashbulbs. So the guy who ran the camera shop, a really nice man, bought me out and gave me enough money to move to New York.
A friend introduced you to Greenwich Village and you began auditioning for gigs. What type of work did you get?
Because I was a good master of ceremonies, I was doing a little bit of everything. I had a rock and roll version of the Mickey Mouse song, which they just loved at that time, in the late ’50s, early ’60s. Plus I was a comic. I was fascinated by sound effects, and understood how you could distort a microphone to your own ends. I became known as the toilet man of Greenwich Village because I could imitate a toilet. I built this routine around it, where my mother introduced me to her friends at a bridge party and said, “Noel would like to do something for you,” hoping that I would do something classical, and I said I wanted to do “an old American Standard.” That was a great and exciting time; it was almost like a university of performance in Greenwich Village in the early ’60s.
How did you meet Peter Yarrow?
I was introduced to Peter by Mary Travers. She was a woman living across the street from the Gaslight Café who took pity on me being a Midwesterner and introduced me to all kind of things, like the Italian street fair in Greenwich Village—and who, I found out later, sang with Pete Seeger and the Almanac Singers.
Mary and I had a musical relationship, nothing personal, never went out on dates or anything; I just knew her from the neighborhood. She called me up one day and said, “I’ve got this guy over here named Peter Yarrow. Can we come over and sing?” I said, “Sure,” so they came over and we went through “Mary Had a Little Lamb” several times because none of us could agree on a folk lyric. We tried a couple of other tunes, but everybody had different lyrics, different chord concepts. So we sang “Mary Had a Little Lamb” three different times, Mary having the lead, Peter and I harmonizing, Peter having the lead, Mary and I harmonizing, and me having the lead and the two of them harmonizing, and it was pretty amazing.
When did you get together as a group?
Peter said, “I’m represented by a man, Albert Grossman, and he wants to start a trio. Would you be up for working out some arrangements of tunes? Then we’ll perform it for him and if he thinks it’s good, we can do the trio.”
So that’s more or less how it began. We had three very different points of view and different voices, which I guess every group that gets together has. Peter and Mary were more aligned in terms of their familiarity with folk music; I was like the rhythm and blues renegade who was a total sellout for jazz. I mean, I loved Dave Brubeck. I loved substitution chords, so I brought a different kind of musical sensibility to folk music in that particular configuration, and sometimes it was not welcome. But pretty early on the three of us recognized that we weren’t going to be purists, and that to do that would actually be a lie.
And there was a simpatico and a regard and a respect for one another that, I must say, really got tested in the ’60s when the group became successful, because we were in each other’s back pocket entirely too much. Two hundred days out on the road—it’s ridiculous to spend that kind of time together!
When did you know that you had “made it” as a performer?
Well, I don’t think that moment happens so much as there is a series of them, and when they begin to happen one right after another, then you go, “Oh!” I think the first one was like that great scene in That Thing You Do—have you ever seen that Tom Hanks film?—where they hear their music on the radio for the first time and they’re running down the sidewalk screaming and yelling and turning on every radio they can? Well, when we heard “Lemon Tree” on the West Coast, we had to pull over on the side of the road, we were giggling so much.
That, plus the fact that we went from fifth on the bill to first on the bill at the Hungry Eye, plus the fact that we were first on the bill at the Blue Angel in New York, and went from third to first on the bill in Chicago. You begin to put these pieces together and you say, “You know, this is evidently our time.”
But we were very well aware of the fact that we had inherited this valued music. Not a lot of people understand that. They think, “Oh, gosh, it’s your performance and it’s your particular persona that made you successful.” Honestly, we inherited 500 to 600 songs from a dictionary of folklore and an interaction between human beings that had been going on for a long, long time, everybody from Woody Guthrie to Cisco Houston to Pete Seeger to Josh White, and we were bringing them to a popular audience who had never heard them before.
Can you talk about the business side of your trio? Were there particular people, besides the three of you, who you feel were major contributors to your commercial success?
Well, first of all, we have to give a great deal of credit to Albert Grossman who was the visionary, and who saw a need in pop music or in the folk arena for a woman’s voice. And he also thought it would be nice if the group was affable. Not necessarily the college humor of the Kingston Trio, but a different perspective on humor, and a seriously beautiful tenor voice, and we covered all of those bases.
And I think there were surprises all along. That Peter should be so fastidious and assiduous and be able to take charge was a nice surprise. He was always onto the next thing. “Did you think about this? Here’s a chance to be in this march. Here’s a chance to be on this television show.” At the same time, who knew that Mary’s fear of being onstage would translate into this sexual, barely-bridal power that men were just fascinated by. I didn’t realize that until 10 to 15 years later when I saw films of us at the Newport Folk Festival, and I went “Whoa! No wonder people loved Mary! My gosh!”
And then I see myself sometimes on these YouTube videos where I’m doing things like parodies of British stage music and I crack myself up. Who is that guy? He looks like an elf, a 6 foot, five inch elf. So, we had a lot of magic going for us, but basically it starts with Albert Grossman, who had the vision of putting us together.
As we moved into the studio and began to record more and more, and we moved from three tracks to four to eight to 16 to digital, we relied a lot on the engineers of New York, in particular Phil Ramone, who went on to do Billy Joel and many other artists. Albert, by the way, our manager, went on to manage [Bob] Dylan and Janis Joplin, Jimmy Hendrix, The Band, Ian and Sylvia—a great bunch of people that we worked with.
And then there was Milt Oaken. Milt was our musical director. It wasn’t that we wouldn’t make up our own parts, but he could keep track of them. He could remind you when you came in the next day, “That’s not what you sang,” because he had it all written out. And through Milt we met John Denver; through Milt we were aware of other musicians who were writing music. So we had early access in ways that many other performers did not to this cutting-edge material.
Who handled your financial decisions?
We incorporated, and so for those first 10 years, Albert handled all of that and it was very helpful. And the success was such that we really had no worries about being able to provide for our families or getting to the next gig. In the early days of most performers’ careers, just getting the car to run between gig A and gig B is enough of a challenge.
In 1963, in addition to PP&M coming out with two albums, you married your wife, Betty. How did you meet?
That’s a sweet personal question. Betty and I went to high school together, so we knew each other in Michigan. I was a senior and she was a junior, so I graduated, went to Michigan State, and Betty went to Wheelock and then transferred to Columbia, and it was just like one of those wonderful coincidences. I’m walking along the street and up out of the subway comes this woman and I said, “Betty? Bannard?” and she said, “Noel Stookey?” and her date said, “You know, I think we really got to move along.” And I said, “Well, hey, this is great! Such an incredible coincidence, can I come along with you?” I had no shame at all.
It turns out, Betty and I talked to each other later and confessed that we each had an attraction for each other in high school, but we’d never hung out in the same crowd. And so it was really nice. The wonderful thing about falling in love with and marrying somebody you knew in high school, you have this whole hidden language that you share. So we’re now on the back end of three daughters and three grandchildren, and so blessed, so happy that we started as friends and now still are.
Peter, Paul and Mary, after phenomenal success, broke up in 1970. Why did you decide to move to Maine a few years later?
I think the complexity of life, because the Peter, Paul and Mary rapid rise to fame and my inability to handle it well led to a kind of social breakdown for me. I needed to get away to someplace quiet to process who I was, reclaim who my family was, and get to know my kids.
We moved to Maine in 1973-74, rented a home, and then created a life there. Basically we were country gentleman and gentlewomen. We had a pig and some sheep and lots of chickens and ducks, and we lived on the ocean and tended our garden and that was great for about five or six years. Then Peter, Mary and I got back together again for a reunion—and it’s a good thing we did, because it’s really hard to send your children to college based on the amount of vegetables you can grow in your victory garden.
You formed a Maine band a few years later called Bodyworks. Can you tell that story?
I wanted to do an album, and little by little began to discover the talents of Maine musicians. It started with Denny Bouchard and Joe England, who did some overdubbing for me. They were part of a group called Star Song, which had Kent Palmer on bass and Tommy Harris on guitar, several different guitars, not only acoustic, but electric and steel. We did an album called Band and Bodyworks with that group that was nominated for a Grammy in 1978-79, and then I went out on the road with a smaller version of the band, and we had a wonderful time. They had been a bar band, and this was an opportunity for them to get involved with folk music’s impact on pop music. They were very musically savvy, but I would say lyrically they were like me in 1960 as a young rock and roll, rhythm and blues player from Michigan. They were Johnny-come-latelys to the folk party. And to realize that music could have that kind of lyrical depth and meaning not only impacted the way that they played their music, but I think the story of the songs began to impact their lives personally.
That band was in some ways an outgrowth of a spiritual awakening you had in the late ’60s. Betty later went to divinity school and has done chaplain work. Lately you’ve been involved in multi-faith work. Can you talk about that?
In this era where we’re being torn asunder by people who speak to our differences rather than our similarities, Betty and I are very concerned and very out-front about our multi-faith support. Betty does readings from many faiths and I sing a lot of my songs which are drawn from my awareness that God speaks to many people in many different ways. So even though I’d probably have to sum up my experience as Christian, the songs that I’ve written and performed and sing are much broader than that. They may make an occasional allusion to Christ’s life because there’s no doubt of its importance in my spiritual birth and awareness, but they also speak to the integrity and authenticity of each person’s path. So we’ve been doing multi-faith presentations now, which is kind of full circle for us.
You’re working on a new album right now, at John Stuart’s studio in Gorham. When will it be released?
May-June of this year. It was originally called One and Many because there is a song on it by that title. The lyric says: “We live in the same house on different floors, I got my window and you’ve got yours. We each got a door that leads to the hall, but the rooms are so cozy and the door is so small. One flame, many candles. One sky, many stars. One sea, many rivers. One love, many hearts.” And it’s the truth that I’m trying to share with my listeners, that we are part of a greater love.
It’s a very intimate album insofar as it’s really just four instruments: There’s a drum and a base and a keyboard and me and my guitar. So the music is very accessible, but, boy, it’s amazing. You’ve heard the expression less is more, well, this is a less-is-more album.
Maine’s been your home for a long time. What are your thoughts on the direction we need economically?
I think Maine has a great opportunity to share in the new wave of commercial success if we understand that we’re moving away from centralized places, except for cities like Portland and mall circumstances, into a kind of high-tech delivery system. Our lives are connected like facets of a jewel and they’re also connected like Internet connecting points. I would encourage government to explore the opportunities for Maine to take advantage of its beautiful spaces by becoming Internet savvy. We don’t have to build more malls; we have to provide a strong infrastructure that allows us to communicate with each other and with the world.
I’m hopeful that we head in that direction, because we’re at the end of the rainbow here.
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