Noel Paul Stookey gained his primary recognition through membership in the folk ensemble Peter, Paul and Mary. While maintaining that role he simultaneously pursued an array of independent projects as a solo performer and composer, a record producer, and an advocate for political and spiritual causes, continuing those lines of work after Mary Travers of the group died in September 2009.
Rock & roll from the 1950s supplied his first musical spark, prompting him to perform electric guitar in multiple adolescent rock ensembles. Audiences responded warmly to his quick-witted stage presence, leading him to serve as a standup comic and nightclub MC during his enrollment at Michigan State University. After graduation he spent a brief period in Pennsylvania before relocating to New York with the goal of establishing himself in entertainment. Daytime employment at a chemical plant supported his household while he hosted performances at Greenwich Village venues; Sunday afternoons found him immersed for hours in informal guitar and vocal gatherings at Washington Square Park.
An invitation extended jointly to Stookey, Peter Yarrow, and neighbor Mary Travers marked a decisive shift, bringing the three together in a folksinging trio assembled by manager Albert Grossman (who already represented Yarrow and would later represent Bob Dylan) and producer Milt Okun. Their first appearance took place at The Bitter End in New York, launching a sustained period of touring and recording that produced eight million-selling albums for one of the era’s commercially prominent folk acts. The self-titled debut album topped the charts and held a Top 20 position for two years. Alongside Stookey’s own material, the trio championed and helped popularize compositions by Bob Dylan, Tom Paxton, Gordon Lightfoot, and John Denver while maintaining an active political presence that included performances at civil rights events with Dr. Martin Luther King in Birmingham, Alabama and Washington, D.C., plus numerous anti-Vietnam War rallies, benefits, and teach-ins.
A profound religious shift occurred for Stookey in 1968 when he embraced born-again Christianity. Two years afterward, following issuance of the greatest-hits collection Ten Years Together, the trio dissolved so each participant could explore individual work. Stookey’s first solo release, Paul And…, contained the track “The Wedding Song (There Is Love),” which proved his most commercially viable independent recording. Written for the wedding of Peter Yarrow and Marybeth McCarthy, niece of senator and former presidential candidate Eugene McCarthy, the song has endured as a standard for ceremonies. Relocating with his family to South Blue Hill, Maine in 1973, Stookey established both a recording facility and the label Neworld, through which he produced and issued the initial two albums by Maine singer-songwriter David Mallet.
Further joint appearances with Yarrow and Travers did not occur until 1978, when the three reconvened for the Survival Sunday benefit that Yarrow organized and produced at the Hollywood Bowl. The experience proved sufficiently positive that they elected to resume their partnership. Over the next three decades they combined solo undertakings with group releases and roughly fifty concerts annually until Travers succumbed in 2009 to complications arising from chemotherapy for leukemia.
Stookey’s composition “El Salvador,” prompted by a Central American tour undertaken with the trio, appeared as a single in 1985. His piece “For the Love of It All” was recorded with Emmylou Harris and featured on the 1996 Peter, Paul and Mary album Lifelines. Beyond his extensive catalog of solo albums and EPs, Stookey directed a multimedia company focused on children’s computer software, television programming, and music, and in the years before widespread Internet access he functioned as systems operator for the Maine-based bulletin board Celestat run by Celestat.
