Content tagged 'Folk'

47 years ago today, Peter, Paul and Mary flew to the top of the Billboard Hot 100 for the first and only time, doing so with a song written by a gentleman who went on to score a few number-one hits himself. Written in 1966 by John Denver, “Leaving on a Jet Plane” actually had another title when it was first composed, and it’s one that will be familiar to anyone who remembers the lyrics to the song: “Babe, I Hate to Go.” Denver’s producer, Milt Okun, talked him into changing it, and if Denver had any regrets about that decision, it’s doubtful that they survived beyond the day the song went to #

He might be one of the go-to names whenever anyone’s making a Canadian-content joke, but as Gordon Lightfoot was declared “a national treasure” by no less an authority of Canadian-born musicians than Robbie Robertson, we’re happy to honor the man who sang “Sundown” by spotlighting a six-pack of Lightfoot tracks sung by other artists. 1. Judy Collins, “Early Morning Rain” – There’s something wonderful about the fact that Collins covered a song by Lightfoot in the 1960s and yet in 2010 Lightfoot cited Collins as one of the musicians who’d influenced him in his career. SPOTIFY: Listen Here 2. Pet

79 years ago today, one of the most famous female icons of folk music was born in Louisville, Kentucky. Mary Allin Travers, the woman who put the “Mary” in “Peter, Paul and Mary,” may have been born in the bluegrass state, but she would soon become a rare member of the Greenwich Village music scene to actually grow up in Greenwich Village. Travers and her family moved to New York City when she was two years old, and given that her parents were both journalists and organizers of the trade union known as The Newspaper Guild, it’s no surprise that she found herself drawn toward singing protest so

40 years ago today, Joni Mitchell released her eight studio album, an LP which was in large part inspired by cross-country car trips taken by Mitchell in late 1975 and early 1976. Produced by Mitchell herself, HEJIRA’s title is – appropriately enough – a transliteration of the Arabic word for “journey.” Granted, its usual usage is in terms of a certain Islamic prophet’s migration from Mecca to Medina, but in this case it’s about the highways and byways of America. "I was getting away from a romance, I was getting away from the craziness and I was searching for something to make sense of everyt