The Garlic: Folk Music

Thursday, January 21, 2010

Sad News Today ... The Passing of Kate McGarrigle

I can't properly convey the profound sadness I felt, when scanning through the paper today, passing over the Obits, and seeing that folk singer Kate McGarrigle, of the famed McGarrigle Sisters, passed away.

It's not that I was a devoted fan, and follower, of the McGarrigle Sisters, or Folk Music, overall.

Yet, I had some unusual awareness of them.

They came through Boston, fairly regularly, and with that, I would hear them on NPR, or local radio.

And, it always struck me, on how the McGarrigle Sisters had something beyond cool, something so special, beyond their talents.

Imagine having a career, with your sibling, with something you love, something you had engaged in, virtually, your entire life ...

How many people can claim that?

Born in Montreal and raised in St.-Sauveur-des-Monts, a small town about 50 miles north, Ms. McGarrigle absorbed a range of musical traditions around a musical hearth. Her father, Frank, was of Irish-Canadian stock and steeped in Stephen Foster and turn-of-the-century parlor songs; from her mother, Gaby, she and her two elder sisters — the oldest McGarrigle sister, Jane, was a church organist — learned old songs in French.

“Music was always there at home,” Kate McGarrigle said in a 1997 interview in Sing Out! magazine. “At parties, somebody would get up and sing, and my father would accompany them and sing the harmony. There were lots of friends and uncles and each would get up and give their big song.”

[snip]

Love and family life were central themes in both women’s music, and their songs often addressed romance’s place in the quotidian details of life. Kate McGarrigle’s 1990 song “I Eat Dinner” contemplates love lost among the leftovers, and both sisters’ “Matapedia,” from 1996, is based on a real event in Kate’s life, when an old flame saw her 17-year-old daughter, Martha, and mistook her for her mother.

Martha, like Rufus, has become a noted singer and songwriter. Their father is the singer-songwriter Loudon Wainwright III, who was married to Ms. McGarrigle in the 1970s.

So sad, as Kate McGarrigle was only 63.

Kate and Anna McGarrigle : Ce Matin

Kate and Anna McGarrigle : Cool River

Kate and Anna McGarrigle: Petite Annonce

You can visit the McGarrigle's website here

Thursday, September 17, 2009

One Grey Day It Happened ... RIP Mary Travers

Somewhere, maybe in Honah Lee, or down Cherry Lane, perhaps, in grief, hiding out in the sea, Puff The Magic Dragon is shedding a torrent of green scales.

I had been working on a another post, when a NYT News Alert dropped in;

Mary Travers, a Member of Peter, Paul and Mary, Has Died at 72

An otherwise good mood turned to sadness.

Rather than continue finishing writing, I spent the next hour+ out on YouTube, listening to Mary Travers, and Peter, Paul and Mary, marveling at how iconic they were, how timeless their music is.

Mary Travers of Peter, Paul and Mary Dies at 72

Mary Travers, whose ringing, earnest vocals with the folk trio Peter, Paul and Mary made songs like “Blowin’ in the Wind,” “If I Had a Hammer” and “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?” enduring anthems of the 1960s protest movement, died on Wednesday at Danbury Hospital in Connecticut. She was 72 and lived in Redding, Conn.

The cause was complications from chemotherapy associated with a bone-marrow transplant she had several years ago after developing leukemia, said Heather Lylis, a spokeswoman.

[snip]

The group’s interpretations of Bob Dylan’s “Blowin’ in the Wind” and “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right” translated his raw vocal style into a smooth, more commercially acceptable sound. The singers also scored big hits with pleasing songs like the whimsical “Puff the Magic Dragon” and John Denver’s plaintive “Leaving on a Jet Plane.”

Their sound may have been commercial and safe, but early on their politics were somewhat risky for a group courting a mass audience. Like Mr. Yarrow and Mr. Stookey, Ms. Travers was outspoken in her support for the civil-rights and antiwar movements, in sharp contrast to clean-cut folk groups like the Kingston Trio, which avoided making political statements.

Peter, Paul and Mary went on to perform at the 1963 March on Washington and joined the voting-rights marches from Selma to Montgomery, Ala., in 1965.