500 Miles — Peter, Paul and Mary
Peter, Paul and Mary had a pivotal, if often forgotten, role in the development of popular music in the 1960s.
The folk revival of the early 1960s was, if not spearheaded by, at least helped along considerably by, Peter, Paul and Mary’s enthusiastic following. And their wonderful recordings of other people’s songs brought some — at the time — unknown artists to national prominence.
Peter, Paul and Mary very much kickstarted the career of the young Bob Dylan, who was little known outside the folk clubs when Peter, Paul and Mary’s cover of “Blowin’ In The Wind” sold over a million copies and reached Number Two in the Billboard Hot 100 in August 1963.
They recorded what I think is the most beautiful version of Gordon Lightfoot’s “Early Morning Rain”. And they took their pretty much unknown friend John Denver’s “Leaving On A Jet Plane” to Number One in 1969, launching the career of an artist who would go on to become one of the world’s biggest-selling acts of the 1970s.
All that was far into the future, though, in 1962 when Peter, Paul and Mary stepped into the recording studio to record “500 Miles” as one of the tracks on their self-titled debut album.
They weren’t the first group to record “500 Miles” but, as with so many of their songs, Peter, Paul and Mary’s popularity brought a great…
