Peter (Yarrow; right), Paul (Stookey; left) & Mary (Travers; center) in 1965
We mark the first appearance on the Billboard charts on March 16, 1963 – 57 years ago today – of the song Puff, the Magic Dragon. Written by Leonard Lipton and Peter Yarrow, recorded by Peter, Paul and Mary and released on January 15, 1963 as a 45-rpm single by Warner Brothers, the song climbed to number 2 on the Billboard charts on March 30, two weeks after it hit the charts on March 16.
I am frequently asked by parents “how do we get our kids interested in music.” As I’ve said before, I have no magic-bullet answer to this question beyond encouraging parents to expose their kids to a variety of music whenever they can: in the car, at home, wherever, and to show an equal willingness to listen to the music their kids like, as well.
In terms of learning to listen to music, nothing had a greater impact on me than my parents’ record collection. Crummy though was the fidelity of our monaural “record player”, I loved those records, with their great cover art and the tactile pleasure of sliding them out of their jackets and putting them on the turntable. …
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Robert Greenberg, Music-Historian-in-Residence, San Francisco Performances (sfperformances.org); The Great Courses (thegreatcoursesdaily.com). Dramaturge, The Phoenix Symphony (phoenixsymphony.org).
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If you haven’t see it yet, please check it out. The “To Do” when you are stuck in your apartment during a pandemic!
https://www.cnn.com/videos/world/2020/03/13/italians-sing-coronavirus-orig-jk.cnn