Noel Paul Stookey in Kent

Noel Paul Stookey is an American folk singer-songwriter, born in Baltimore in 1937 and best known as Paul in the trio Peter, Paul and Mary. The group recorded folk standards and contemporary songs including “Puff, the Magic Dragon,” “If I Had a Hammer” and “Leaving on a Jet Plane,” while Stookey’s best-known solo composition is “Wedding Song (There Is Love).” Peter, Paul and Mary performed “If I Had a Hammer” and “Blowin’ in the Wind” at the March on Washington in 1963. The trio reunited for the anti-nuclear Survival Sunday benefit at the Hollywood Bowl in 1978, then resumed concert work that continued until Mary Travers’s death in 2009.