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Last Night I Had The Strangest Dream (C)(WORD)
Last Night I Had The Strangest Dream (C)(PDF)
Last Night I Had The Strangest Dream (G)(WORD)
Last Night I Had The Strangest Dream (G)(PDF)
YOU CAN PLAY ALONG WITH THE ORIGINAL ED McCURDY RECORDING using the (C) songsheet! Thanks to Charles de Lint for bringing this song to BUG.
FROM CANADIAN SONGWRITERS HALL OF FAME: "Last Night I Had the Strangest Dream" was initially composed by McCurdy during the spring of 1950, during a period in time in which there was an ever-looming threat of war, with a big "Red Scare" being spread by politicians such as Joseph McCarthy. The song was one of McCurdy's first original compositions. It was written in a period of McCurdy's life in which he resided in Canada, where he moved in 1948. It was here that McCurdy was introduced to folk music by artists such as Oscar Brand, Josh White, and Pete Seeger, a genre he would embrace on his first album by the name of Sings Canadian Folksongs in 1949. McCurdy had sung gospel music on U.S. radio, and moved to Vancouver after World War II with his Canadian wife. While hosting his CBC radio show in 1947, he met Pete Seeger and other influential folk artists. He moved to Toronto to host another radio show a few years later, and sang in New York City clubs, where the folk music revival was in full swing. In New York he sang "Last Night I Had The Strangest Dream", one of his first original compositions, for Seeger and The Weavers at their hotel. Seeger immediately began singing it in concerts, and the folk-music magazine “Sing Out!” published it in July 1951. Seeger was first to record it, on his 1956 album “Love Songs for Friends and Foes” (Smithsonian Folkways), with simple banjo accompaniment. The Weavers recorded it next (1960) followed by Canada’s The Travellers; Chad Mitchell (1962); The Kingston Trio (1963); and Simon and Garfunkel (1964) on “Wednesday Morning 3 A.M.”