Oh Johnny, oh Johnny I fear you are unkind I love you far better Than all of mankind.I love you far better Than words can e’er express Won’t you let me go with you Yes, my love, yes - The Cruel War	From the PP&M Website

If the plane crash on 3 February 1959 that killed Buddy Holly, Richie Valens and J.P. Richardson, “The Big Bopper” was, as Don McLean wrote, “the day the music died,” then for me 16 September 2009 was the second day the music died when Mary Travers of Peter, Paul and Mary passed.  Where Buddy Holly was the music of my youth, PP&M were the music of my early adulthood and Mary Travers stood at the forefront of the 1960’s movements to end a war and right racial injustice as one of the forces that helped shape the times that shaped my life.

Peter, Paul and Mary were the quintessential example of the whole being greater than the sum of its parts.  Each of the three achieved only minor success as individual performers, but together they reached a pinnacle of which many can only dream.  They were not everyone’s favorite group, but they were one of mine.  Still are.

Whether she was singing the lead on “If I Had a Hammer,” or harmonizing on “Blowin’ in the Wind,” Mary Travers was the soul of PP&M.  Her voice had an emotional drive that gave each song’s message a sense of urgency and importance.

While hers was not always the most lyrical soprano, often carrying an edge that cut rather than embraced, the beauty of her voice can be heard in a couple of the group’s songs, most notably “Leaving on a Jet Plane” and, one of my personal favorites, “The Cruel War.”

“The Cruel War” is a song that has been around at least since the Revolutionary War and has an almost innumerable collection of verses.  It was especially popular during the Civil War.

Rather than being an anti-war protest song, “The Cruel War” is an Anglo-American folksong in which a young woman expresses her distress at the impending departure of her lover, Johnny, who must march off to war in two days.  The young woman so wants to be with him that she offers to dress as a man and accompany him to the war.  If he is to die, she wants to die with him.

Through the first three verses of PP&M’s version of the song, Johnny refuses to let her accompany him, but in the fourth verse, he gives in to Mary’s heart-wrenching claim that he is being unkind and that she loves him “far better than all of mankind.”  It is in this fourth verse that Mary’s voice touches the listener’s heart perhaps as deeply as anything she ever sang.

I went to bed last night with “The Cruel War” playing on the CD player by my bed knowing there will never be another Mary.

Listen to The Cruel War