A Legendary Day with Fred MacMurray

A Sample Blog Post/Profile

I only met Fred MacMurray once. Once wasn't enough, but I'll take it.

Our visit was all I'd hoped...I'll always remember his self-effacing humor. He was also, it turned out, a much better conversationalist than the Shaggy Dog.

But maybe I should explain.

October 13, 1987 was the inauguration of the Disney Legends Promenade at The Walt Disney Studios, and MacMurray was the very first Legend to be honored. Although his late-career portrayal of Professor Ned Brainard in The Absent-Minded Professor (1961) and Son of Flubber (1963) may have endeared him to Disney fans, it was his first Disney feature role that led to his “Legendary” selection.

In 1959, MacMurray was cast as Tommy Kirk’s befuddled father in The Shaggy Dog, a canine comedy caper (and surprise hit) that also showcased young Disney veterans Tim Considine, Kevin “Moochie” Corcoran, and Annette Funicello. Because The Disney Channel had scheduled the film (and a 1976 sequel, The Shaggy D.A.) on their fall 1987 line-up, a “Disney Legends” award was conceived as an additional promotional push for "Shaggy Dog Month." So, MacMurray and his wife, actress/dancer June Haver, were invited out to Burbank for the ceremony.

When told about the award idea, then-Disney CEO Michael Eisner – to his credit – felt the concept, if given the right attention, could be much more lasting and impactful, something it has clearly become over the past 20+ years under the watchful eye of Jeff Hoffman (For an interview with Jeff about the awards, click HERE).

But back to 1987, MacMurray, and the dog.

(To continue reading on my "Get it. Got it. Good." blog, click HERE).

Peter, Paul & Mary Still Raising Their Voices

A Sample Article*

In 1961, three young folk singers united in song for the first time on the stage of the Bitter End coffee house in New York’s Greenwich Village.

Today, Peter Yarrow, Noel Paul Stookey and Mary Travers continue to raise their voices–and our collective conscience–with a song that rings like the bell of freedom for what Travers describes as “fundamental human rights.” In short, they have graduated from the front line of the civil rights and anti-war movements of the 1960s to an equally active role against homelessness, hunger and apartheid.

But Peter, Paul & Mary’s act isn’t all serious topics and long faces. Nearly three decades into their stint as arguably the most successful and highly-visible banner carriers of the popular folk boom, the group still knows how to have fun. In addition to Blowin’ in the Wind and If I Had a Hammer, the trio continues to offer up Puff, the Magic Dragon and I’m in Love With a Big, Blue Frog to fans worldwide.

Their ability to reach an audience on several different levels is part of the beauty of folk music, an aspect that Stookey is quick to point out.

“When folk music made its impact on popular radio,” he said during a recent phone interview, “the real impact was not the style, though everybody thought it was. The real impact was in content, because suddenly people became aware that you didn’t just have to croon about love lost or love found. There was a breadth of subject material.

“And some of it, while it may have been uncomfortable, was actually kind of stirring, and it allowed a format where people could discuss current events. And that impact has never been lost.”

The impact of folk music has also had a profound influence on Stookey’s non-performing life. After singing traditional gospel songs and of the need for a brotherhood of man, he realized that something was missing in his life. He embraced Christianity in the late 1960s.

“(Folk music) certainly has affected my life,” he said. “Even my search for spiritual values–the search for truth with a capital “T,” the search for love with a capital “L”–came as a result of my appreciation and my undisputed admiration for folk music and the process.

Because, inherent in what keeps those songs alive without any kind of radio play is the fact that they speak to something so deep within us that we can’t even articulate our appreciation.”

When the trio disbanded amicably in 1970 after eight gold and five platinum albums, Stookey formed a Christian group, The Bodyworks Band, and founded a multimedia organization that has been involved in a variety of television and music projects.

Bodyworks has just released a new album, In Love Beyond Our Lives, for Gold Castle Records, PP&M’s current label. The ten-song collection includes Stookey’s Father’s House, an acapella study of his own spiritual journey. In keeping with the tradition he began with The Wedding Song, he has assigned all the rights to (and the profits from) the song to the Public Domain Foundation.

“My attitude is that some songs are created out of personal experience…out of my perspective.” Stookey explained. “Some songs, however, are inspired, and wouldn’t exist were it not for a gift–a coincidental gift–of circumstance, in which case I feel that in deference to the source of that inspiration, that I need to assign it to the Public Domain Foundation, which in turn assigns its funds to various charities in the country.”

Travers and Yarrow have also actively pursued solo careers. Travers recorded five albums, produced, wrote and starred in a BBC television series, and toured the world giving concerts and lectures. Yarrow concentrated on political activism and on solo music projects, recording two albums and producing a variety of others.

Yarrow is now involved with another project near and dear to the hearts of PP&M fans around the world: the digital remastering of the group’s entire Warner Bros. catalog, a total of eleven albums, some long out of print. So far, the project has resulted in the compact disc reissue of the trio’s first two studio albums (Peter, Paul & Mary and Moving) and their 1964 live recording.

It was also Yarrow who was largely responsible for reuniting the group in 1978. He was helping organize a Hollywood Bowl benefit concert, and he asked Travers and Stookey to join him.

“We hadn’t sung together in six years,” Travers recalled recently. “We realized that we missed each other personally and musically, so we decided to try a limited reunion tour. We wanted to work together enough to have it be a meaningful part of our lives, but not so much that it wouldn’t be fun."

They seem to have found a workable balance between group responsibilities and individual projects. They perform 50 to 60 dates a year as a trio, with nearly half of those shows falling in the summer, when they often split the week with three days on the road and four days at home.

When the call of the road quiets, Yarrow and Travers head back to New York City. Stookey, on the other hand, sets his sights for the Maine coast, where he and his family have lived for the past 16 years.

“I surely have the best of all possible worlds,” Stookey confides. “Where I am living is very much like the small town in Maryland where I was born and raised for the first ten years of my life. I have the opportunity to travel, and I have the opportunity to retreat back into relative solace.”

With two recent albums to their credit (No Easy Walk to Freedom and A Holiday Celebration) and another one on the way (tentatively titled Perennials), PP&M show no sign o slowing their pace. And, as the most successful folk group in the history of popular music, there is a chance that their millions of fans wouldn’t let them. This fall will bring a tour of the Orient, and next year may find them in Europe.

Their music has built bridges, linking people of different generations as well as different opinions and beliefs…all with the magic of a song.

“Who would have picked Puff the Magic Dragon as a folk song,” Stookey asked rhetorically. “But it is, because it doesn’t need a CD to stay alive, it doesn’t need charts. Children will sing it in the back seat of cars. Parents will sing it to their children. Grandparents will sing it to their grandchildren. And the same thing has happened now with Blowin’ in the Wind and If I Had a Hammer. They’re rally songs. They’re anthems for the spirit of humankind looking for a just world.”

*Originally published in the Nashua Telegraph. The complete text of my interview with Stookey was published later in The Folk Era Today! magazine. It was also written prior to the September 2009 passing of Mary Travers.

A decade after I interviewed Noel Stookey for this profile, I had the unique opportunity to join him for a duet at a friend's wedding (above). We rehearsed a couple of weeks earlier, backstage at Humphrey's By the Sea in San Diego prior to a PP&M concert. What a thrill it was to play (a lot) and sing along (a little) with one of my heroes!