Song of the Day 1/17: Peter, Paul and Mary, “Leaving on a Jet Plane”
If John Denver wrote this song today he’d have to include something about getting his Covid test before being allowed to board.
Peter, Paul and Mary were an oldies act by the time this song reached No. 1 in December 1969, more than two years after its release on the group’s “Album 1700.” That LP spawned a Top 10 hit, “I Dig Rock and Roll Music,” but “Leaving on a Jet Plane” wasn’t released as a single until two years later, between a couple of singles from their first children’s album, “Peter, Paul and Mommy.”
Somebody at Warner Bros. was prescient or lucky, because the timing was perfect. Though US troop deployment in Vietnam peaked the year before, there were still more than half a million Americans with boots on the ground, and most were being rotated out annually. You don’t need higher math to realize that’s a lot of goodbyes at a lot of airports. It became Peter, Paul and Mary’s only No. 1 hit — both “Puff (the Magic Dragon)” and “Blowin’ in the Wind” stalled at No. 2 in 1963.
When John Denver wrote the song in 1967, he called it “Babe I Hate to Go.” At the time he was the 23-year-old guy who had replaced Chad Mitchell in the Chad Mitchell Trio, and he was killing time in a Washington airport when the song came to him. Years later he told the BBC,
This is a very personal and very special song for me. It doesn’t conjure up Boeing 707s or 747s for me as much as it does the simple scenes of leaving. Bags packed and standing by the front door, taxi pulling up in the early morning hours, the sound of a door closing behind you, and the thought of leaving someone that you care for very much. I was fortunate to have Peter, Paul and Mary record it and have it become a hit, but it still strikes a lonely and anguished chord in me, because the separation still continues, although not so long and not so often nowadays.
He recorded it three times, starting with his debut album; the Denver version most people hear today was re-recorded in 1973 for his Greatest Hits LP. This is a rare live recording made in 1967 — if what Denver said on stage is true, it’s just the second time he played the song for an audience. Alert listeners will notice a couple of minor lyric and melodic changes from the hit version. Perhaps most significantly, because Mary Travers sings the lead part, “I’ll bring your wedding ring” became “I’ll wear your wedding ring.”
In 1985 I happened to see Peter, Paul and Mary in Charlotte North Carolina. It was an amazing performance by the artist and audience.
When invited to sing, the audience joined in harmonizing and with a kind of mass understanding of the music’s dynamics. It was like being in a really good 15,000 person choir.
PP&M — my first concert.
Sponsored by my high school student government, at a boys’ Catholic high school no less, if you can believe that, in the spring of ’63. A sellout in an auditorium that seated about 1500. PP&M even promoted the concert when they appeared on American Bandstand the week before.
Thanks for reminding me.
The first John Denver recording of “Babe I Hate to Go” was on an extremely rare lp which Denver made for friends and family as Christmas presents in 1966. The album was titled “John Denver Sings.” Supposedly only 250 copies were made.
As an aside, Joe Frazier, one of the original members of the Chad Mitchell Trio (which later became the Mitchell Trio after Chad left) during the Denver years, became an Episcopal priest. He lived in Wilmington’s Ninth Ward for several years during the 1970s. His parish was the Cathedral Church of St John, at Concord Avenue and Market Street.