They were enormously successful in the early- and mid-1960s, with their debut album topping the charts for weeks, and helped popularize the folk music revival.

[3] In May 1963, Stookey described the formation and dynamics of the group on Folk Music Worldwide, an international short-wave radio show in New York City.

Peter, Paul and Mary received the Sammy Cahn Lifetime Achievement Award from the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2006.

Manager Albert Grossman created Peter, Paul and Mary in 1961, after auditioning several singers in the New York folk scene, including Dave Van Ronk, who was rejected as too idiosyncratic and uncommercial, and Carolyn Hester.

After rehearsing Yarrow, Stookey and Travers out of town in Boston and Miami, Grossman booked them into The Bitter End, a coffee house, nightclub and popular folk music venue in New York City's Greenwich Village.

The group recorded their debut album, Peter, Paul and Mary, and it was released by Warner Bros. the following year.

It remained a main catalog-seller for decades to come, eventually selling over two million copies, earning double platinum certification from the RIAA in the United States alone.

In 1963 the group released "Puff, the Magic Dragon", with music by Yarrow and words based on a poem that had been written by a fellow student at Cornell, Leonard Lipton.

[8] That year the group performed "If I Had a Hammer" and "Blowin' in the Wind" at the August 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, best remembered for Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech.

Britain's Petula Clark also recorded a version of the song, which in 1973 charted strongly in the UK, Australia and elsewhere.

This concert was followed by a 1978 summer reunion tour, including a September 3 evening performance at Red Rocks Amphitheatre.

[17] After their reunion, double-bassist Dick Kniss (who had been their bassist in their studio recordings and with their 1960s tours) rejoined the group.