Last night I had the strangest dream
Last night I had the strangest dream is an anti-war song written by Ed McCurdy in 1950 and one of the classic American folk songs after World War II .
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The song portrays a dream of the singer in which the mighty powers of the world agree not to fight each other anymore.
"I dreamed the world had all agreed / to put an end to war"
After the contracts are signed and a million copies made, people dance in the streets and throw their guns to the ground.
Origin and meaning
McCurdy's song was written in the phase of the escalating Cold War , under the influence of the preceding Second World War and the beginning Korean War . Large parts of the American population believed that wars against America's enemies were always necessary and just, making McCurdy's vision seem monstrous to many. Left-wing authors praised the song, but it was only with the rise of the peace movement and the revival of folk music in the early 1960s that it became increasingly popular. Pacifist folk performers like Joan Baez recorded versions of the song. The song started a tradition of new anti-war songs of the counterculture in the USA, like " Where Have All the Flowers Gone " by Pete Seeger (1955) or " Blowin 'in the wind " by Bob Dylan (1962), which differ from the more traditional protest songs like for example " We Shall Overcome ".
Later cover versions come from Simon & Garfunkel ( Wednesday Morning, 3 AM , 1964) and John Denver (1971) , for example . It is the only song that John Denver and Chad Mitchell , which he replaced with the Chad Mitchell Trio in 1965 , ever recorded together on the album Mighty Day Reunion (1994). A version by Johnny Cash appeared in 2010 on his posthumously released album American VI: Ain't No Grave . There are now versions of McCurdy's original title in 67 languages, including a German version by Hannes Wader (“Traum vom Frieden”, 1979).
In 1980 the Peace Corps made the song one of their official theme songs.
Individual evidence
- ^ Richard Carlin: Folk . Infobase Publishing, 2006, p. 135
- ^ M. Paul Holsinger: War and American Popular Culture: A Historical Encyclopedia . Greenwood Publishing Group, 1999, p. 346
- ↑ James E. Perone: Music of The Counterculture Era . Greenwood Publishing Group, 2004, p. 33
- ^ Billboard Magazine, Volume 112, No. 16, p. 96