Peter, Paul & Mary – Carry It On (4-CD box)

Very few acts have juggled outspoken political ideology and show business polish successfully for any extended length of time: U2; Rage Against The Machine; Public Enemy. But Peter Yarrow, Noel Paul Stookey and Mary Travers — a.k.a. Peter, Paul & Mary — did it first. They marched through Alabama with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1965, and celebrated their 25th year as a group by being arrested at an anti-apartheid demonstration. They also sold a boatload of records, spinning tunes by Bob Dylan and the Weavers into pop hits before most folks outside of Greenwich Village had learned those famous names.

Although PP&M still perform and record, this four-CD retrospective wisely concentrates heavily on the group’s 1962-70 heyday. The big hits are all here (John Denver’s “Leaving On A Jet Plane”), along with prescient selections from the catalogues of Laura Nyro and Tom Paxton, and originals (“Oh, Rock My Soul”) that would go on to become coffeehouse staples.

But disc three includes some curveballs which belie the misconception that the threesome are unrelentingly earnest folkies, most notably the amusing 1967 pastiche “I Dig Rock And Roll Music”, with its dead-on imitation of the Mamas & the Papas, and “Because All Men Are Brothers”, a collaboration with the Dave Brubeck Quartet based on a Bach chorale. Nor is their signature ditty, “Puff The Magic Dragon”, the only notable kid-friendly number in their repertoire; the Little League tale “Right Field”, from 1986, is as insidiously catchy as “The Rainbow Connection”.

With five-plus hours of music, plus a bonus DVD, Carry It On features way more content than casual fans require. (Even die-hards will probably fast forward through “Paultalk”, twelve minutes of dated stand-up comedy from Stookey.) But it also serves as a welcome reminder that Peter, Paul & Mary were not only culturally significant, their aesthetic was ultimately more complex than their straightforward singing style, their slightly square image, and their music’s rotation on Adult Contemporary radio suggested.