Peter, Paul and Mary – If I Had a Hammer

I spent a bunch of time trying to find which Peter, Paul and Mary album was the one I remembered from my childhood. Ten Years Together is not on the streaming services, but all of the others either had songs I didn’t know or were missing songs I remembered. Thanks to the internet, I found this one and it had all the songs I was looking for.

In all honesty, I don’t really remember this album cover but according to the track listing, this has to be the one my dad played frequently when I was young. My dad’s taste in music tended to be less classical than my mom’s and leaned toward folk adjacent and that sort of clean-cut pop from the 60s. So Peter, Paul and Mary singing Bob Dylan songs instead of Bob Dylan. The Kingston Trio, the Mamas & the Papas, Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass, you get the idea. He was a huge John Denver fan and I don’t think I realized at the time that Peter, Paul and Mary’s biggest hit, Leaving on a Jet Plane, was written by John Denver.

Here’s the track listing:

Blowin’ in the Wind [by Bob Dylan]
Too Much of Nothing [by Bob Dylan]
Lemon Tree
Stewball
Early Morning Rain [by Gordon Lightfoot]
500 Miles
I Dig Rock and Roll Music
Leaving on a Jet Plane [by John Denver]
Puff (the Magic Dragon)
For Lovin’ Me [by Gordon Lightfoot]
Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right [by Bob Dylan]
If I Had a Hammer [by Pete Seeger]
Day Is Done

I think what makes this one stand out to me more than an album by one of the other groups my dad liked was the fact that it had Puff (the Magic Dragon) on it. I was a little kid, and that’s a song for little kids. Then there was the super groovy I Dig Rock and Roll Music and I always loved Lemon Tree. I suppose one could argue that John Denver was really a much more prominent artist in my life at that time but I liked that Mary was in Peter, Paul and Mary, making it easy for me to sing along. Something about their voices just really stuck with me. And you know that meme, where people ask what radicalized you? If it wasn’t Captain von Trapp ripping the Nazi flag in half then it was definitely Peter, Paul and Mary singing If I Had a Hammer. The hammer of justice? The bell of freedom? Love between my brothers and my sisters, all over this land? What crazy ideas were put in my head as a young child!