On being the fourth part of a trio and a sign of the times
In looking at recorded performances of the Peter, Paul and Mary trio, the emphasis appears to be on the “trio” aspect, and Kniss is often out of the spotlight. “Whether or not you see him,” says Diane, “was dependent on the camera angles for the show and where they had him on stage.” It was a true folk music lineup of just two guitars and an upright bass, so Kniss was the only other musician there playing with them, just not always in view. “Then, too,” says Diane, “a lot of times you would see them and you wouldn’t necessarily register that there was a bass player there. Sometimes it was a contractual thing, or had to do with money or whatever, that he would not necessarily be shown. There were occasional times, very rare,” she says, “where they would do something without him, but that was few and far between, and it would be a logistical thing, never any other reason besides that.”
Peter, Paul and Mary were as famous for their social activism as for their engaging vocal harmonies. Kniss performed with the trio at the national celebration of the 25th anniversary of Martin Luther King’s birthday as a holiday, and at many benefits for a range of causes, primarily having to do with civil rights. They performed at a freedom rally the night of March 24, 1965 during the third Selma-to-Montgomery march that marked the height of the civil rights movement in this country. Not long before Kniss passed away, he and Diane were watching a documentary on Harry Belafonte, also an activist of note, who had performed at the freedom rally in Montgomery as well. As the Knisses watched the film with a friend, they were amused to note that when the documentary showed the Peter, Paul and Mary trio performing at the rally, you didn’t see Dick on camera, but there in the corner of the screen could be seen “Harry.”
Final memories
Dick first joined Peter, Paul and Mary in 1964. His last performance with them was in 2009. In September of that year, Mary Travers died (The “Mary” to Peter and Paul), and that December, Dick played his last concert with Peter Yarrow and Noel (Paul) Stookey. After that, says Diane, Dick did some local benefits and played at places like the Woodstock and New Paltz art and craft fairs, and he recorded and played with an acoustic group out of Albany called “all-SHe-wrote,” (sic) but he no longer went on the road.
Diane says that the outpouring of affection since Dick’s passing has been “almost overwhelming but so heartwarming.” A man in Florida wrote to tell her how much it had meant to him just to have met Dick, and a fan in Tokyo sent a huge bouquet of flowers. (Peter, Paul and Mary have always been very popular in Japan, Diane says, and they have their own Japanese version of the trio, complete with a bass-playing double of her husband.)
Dick and Diane met while she was on vacation with her mother at a resort where Dick had taken a job playing bass, during a time that Mary Travers had given birth to her second daughter and the trio was on hiatus. (The resort job also provided Dick the chance to play golf during the day.) When asked to name her favorite memory of her husband, Diane says she can’t pick just one. “We were together for almost 45 years,” she says. “But you know, I can just see him carrying that bass on his back.”
The great thing about the Peter, Paul and Mary shows, says Diane, is that “I could take my parents, and I could take my kids, and I knew that everybody was going to enjoy it and get something out of it. We’d sit and look out at the audience, especially in the later years, and see four generations there. You don’t see many people last that amount of time like that. The Rolling Stones have, but you don’t look out at the audience and see four generations coming to see them, and all of them enjoying it like with Peter, Paul and Mary.”
In addition to Diane and their sons, Jonathan and Peter Kniss, survivors include a son from a previous relationship, Richard Manders; sisters, Carol Smith and Karen Stensrud; a half-brother, Lewis Johnson; and seven grandchildren. The family requests that donations in Dick’s name be made to Hospice of Dutchess & Ulster Counties, which provided exceptional care to him in his final months. Expressions of condolence may be shared in Dick’s memory at www.SeamonWilseyFuneralHome.com.
