The song was recorded by a group of folk singers that included Ms. Hawes, her husband, Baldwin “Butch’’ Hawes, and Steiner. O’Brien’s bandwagon would blare “MTA’’ along with other political tunes through the streets of Boston.
“Those were the days when candidates rode around in cars with loudspeakers, and you played music to attract voters,’’ Ms. Hawes told the Globe in 1993.
The appeals failed; O’Brien finished last in a race won by John Hynes. But “The MTA’’ helped protesters collect about 100,000 signatures to reverse the fare increase.
The song was recorded by the Kingston Trio a decade later and became a worldwide hit. Sympathizers from as far away as Germany sent nickels to the Transit Authority to secure the release of “Charlie.’’
The Dropkick Murphy’s did a punk remake of the song in 1998: “Skinhead on the MBTA.’’
In 2004, when the subway token was replaced by an electronic payment card, officials proclaimed it the Charlie Card in homage.
Born in Austin, Texas, Bess Lomax was home-schooled by her mother, Bess Bauman Brown, who also taught her to play piano. After her mother died in 1931, the family moved to Washington, D.C., and she assisted her father’s musical research.
She graduated with a bachelor’s degree in sociology from Bryn Mawr College in 1941 and worked during World War II as a radio programmer for the Office of War Information. After bumping into Seeger in New York City, she became one of a rotating crew of vocalists in the Almanac Singers.
She married Baldwin Hawes in 1943. The couple moved to Cambridge and lived there until 1952, when they moved to California. They settled into what was then a bohemian community in Topanga Canyon.
There, she began a long career as a folklorist and teacher.
She joined the faculty at California State University, Northridge, eventually becoming head of the anthropology department. She also made several documentary films exploring American music and folklore, including “Pizza Pizza Daddy-O,’’ showing schoolgirls singing and clapping on a Los Angeles playground in 1967.
With Bessie Jones she made another film, “George Sea Island Singers,’’ and she and Jones wrote “Step It Down: Games, Plays, Songs, and Stories from the Afro-American Heritage’’ (1972).
“To me, it’s another way of getting to the human mystery, why people behave the way they do,’’ Ms. Hawes said in a 2000 Los Angeles Times interview in explaining the value of studying folklore.
In 1977, she joined the National Endowment of the Arts, directing the agency’s folk and traditional arts program. She retired in 1992 and the next year was awarded the National Medal of Arts by President Clinton.
Ms. Hawes’s children followed in her footsteps. Her daughter, Naomi Bishop of Portland, is a retired Northridge anthropology professor; another daughter, Corey Denos of Bellingham, Wash., is a teacher; and her son, Nicholas of Portland, is a folk musician.
Ms. Hawes also leaves six grandchildren and two great-grandchildren. Her husband died in 1971.
A private family service is planned next week, with public services expected later, Denos told the Associated Press.