When Bob Dylan famously took the stage at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival and "plugged in" - an event dramatized at the climax of the Golden Globe-nominated film A Complete Unknown - the friendly face serving as emcee tried mightily to calm the fiercely divided crowd. Though his screen time in director James Mangold's film is minimal, Nick Pupo makes an impression as that beleaguered host: one Peter Yarrow, of Peter, Paul, and Mary. The folk trio was part of the same managerial stable as Dylan and he was well-acquainted with them. The Newport headliners had, after all, released Dylan's "Blowin' in the Wind" in 1963 - a mere three weeks after Dylan's own version on The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan. They took the pointed yet lilting anthem all the way to No. 2 on the Billboard 200 (with two Grammy Awards to follow). Following the thunderous electric set at Newport, Yarrow coaxed the reticent singer-songwriter and newly-minted rock star back onstage to serenade the audience with just his acoustic guitar, bringing his performance to a close on a calmer note than it had begun. Peter, Paul, and Mary typically projected calm. His soaring yet delicate tenor blended with the voices of Noel Paul Stookey and Mary Travers to create a quietly ravishing sound, albeit one with righteous anger at social injustice never far from the surface. With Yarrow's passing at the age of 86 following a long battle with cancer, Stookey is the trio's lone surviving member.

Perhaps no folk group did as much as Peter, Paul, and Mary to bring the genre into the mainstream. Though they were brought together by pugnacious manager Albert Grossman in the mold of many a pop group, they quickly found their blend had true magic. Yarrow was already up and coming by the time he met Grossman; the two men first met at Newport Folk, of which Grossman was a founder. Peter, Paul, and Mary's self-titled 1962 debut album on Warner Bros. solidified their instant superstar status: it spent seven weeks at No. 1, remaining in the Billboard Top 10 for ten moths and eventually selling over two million copies. The album represented a passing of the torch in one sense: its most successful single was Pete Seeger's "If I Had a Hammer," first recorded by his landmark group The Weavers. The album also featured Seeger's "Where Have All the Flowers Gone" as well as Will Holt's "Lemon Tree" (another hit), originals written and/or arranged by Yarrow and Stookey, and even "Bamboo" by Dave Van Ronk, one of the talented folksingers who auditioned for Grossman to be part of the group.

Peter, Paul, and Mary went from success to success in the tumultuous '60s, notching a dozen Top 40 hits, six of which went into the Top 10, including their chart-topping rendition of the young John Denver's "Leavin' on a Jet Plane." Much to the disdain of many of his colleagues (including some of those who sat with him on the Newport Folk Festival board), Yarrow had long championed contemporary voices and sounds in folk, balancing traditionalism with a progressive bent that saw the group transcend generations.

Five of their LPs went to the Top 10, including two No. 1s. Though they were mainstays of the pop chart, they hardly played it safe. Politics and music were inextricably intertwined in the Peter, Paul, and Mary discography, as with "Blowin' in the Wind." They sang Dylan's words and music in August 1963 at Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s March on Washington, passionately and indelibly linking it with the civil rights movement. They openly supported such Democratic presidential candidates as Eugene McCarthy (1968) and George McGovern (1972) and the passage of the Equal Rights Act, and protested nuclear energy.

Their second album, featuring Woody Guthrie's "This Land Is Your Land," introduced the song with which the group might have been most closely associated. Yarrow wrote "Puff, the Magic Dragon" based on a poem by college friend Leonard Lipton. The song beautifully evoked the passage of childhood and the loss of innocence with its whimsical story of a dragon named Puff and his friend Jackie Paper. "Puff" topped the Billboard AC chart, went to No. 2 Pop, and even crossed over the Top 10 of the R&B survey(!), inspiring an animated film, storybook, a stage show, and umpteen parodies. Yet its simple, truthful message and captivating imagery shine most brightly in the original recording led by Yarrow's warm voice.

Peter, Paul, and Mary found new meaning for the Vietnam era in older, traditional folk songs even as they recorded newer material from Dylan, Denver, Gordon Lightfoot, Laura Nyro, Fred Neil, Eric Andersen, and Tom Paxton.  Though they cheerfully insisted "I Dig Rock and Roll Music" in a 1967 hit single spoofing The Mamas and The Papas, The Beatles and Donovan, the ribbing was good-natured.

As the 1960s turned into the 1970s, a darker side of Peter Yarrow was revealed. In 1970, he pleaded guilty to indecent behavior with a minor, and was sentenced to prison. He served just under three months of a 1-to-3-year sentence, and was pardoned by President Jimmy Carter in 1981. "I fully support the current movements demanding equal rights for all and refusing to allow continued abuse and injury - most particularly of a sexual nature, of which I am, with great sorrow, guilty," he told The New York Times in 2019. "I do not seek to minimize or excuse what I have done, and I cannot adequately express my apologies and sorrow for the pain and injury I have caused in this regard." Yarrow always maintained the incident was a singular one, though other women had come forward with similar allegations.

Though his solo debut (1972's Peter) was unsuccessful, his composition "Torn Between Two Lovers" (penned with Phillip Jarrell) became a No. 1 for singer Mary MacGregor in 1976. In his later years, Yarrow continued to make music both on his own and on and off with the group (until Travers' 2009 death). In 2000, he co-founded Operation Respect, a nonprofit group targeting bullying and encouraging tolerance in children.

Peter, Paul, and Mary bridged the gap between the clean-shaven, well-scrubbed folkies so memorably, if lovingly, parodied in A Mighty Wind and the rock generation by singing of themes and causes important to the younger generation in an unadorned yet intricate fashion to which they responded. By the end of the '60s, folk was out and psychedelia and hard rock were in; a gentler sound re-emerged with the rise of the so-called "confessional" singer-songwriter, but the music of Peter, Paul, and Mary endured for its authenticity, its beauty, and its ongoing relevance. Yarrow remained proud of the fact that the group maintained its fans over the decades, even those who didn't agree with their political leanings. Music, as always, proved to be the great unifier. Peter Yarrow, Noel Paul Stookey, and Mary Travers were among the most powerful exponents of a message of peace, love, hope, and joy.

If you or someone close to you has been the victim of sexual abuse, please visit the Rape, Abuse, and Incest National Network https://www.rainn.org or call 1-800-656-4673.