They Call The Wind Maria - Folk Music Revival

Folk Music Revival

The song gained renewed popularity during the American folk music revival. In 1959, it was included on the Kingston Trio's first live album, ...from the Hungry i, which reached #2 on the Billboard Pop chart, and won a RIAA gold record in 1960. It was also included on the Smothers Brothers first album, The Songs and Comedy of the Smothers Brothers! Recorded at the Purple Onion, San Francisco, released in 1961. Other folk singers who performed the song included Josh White and Burl Ives. Musical historian John Bush Jones wrote that the song "so evokes the American West that during the folksinging craze of the later 1950s countless Americans thought 'They Call the Wind Maria' was a folksong, not a show tune!"

The Smothers Brothers performed the song on their TV variety show, The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, in 1968. The brothers jokingly introduced the song by arguing about whether it was an Israeli folk song or a Dutch folk song. Tommy Smothers concluded that the song had come from the Israeli section of Holland. He then told a story that the song had originated when a young couple were having a picnic beneath a windmill, when the girl got caught in a windmill blade, but said that she is OK now. They then performed the song straight.