I grew up in the 1950s listening to “Last Night I Had the Strangest Dream,” responding to it as the devout respond to hymns in church. I had no idea that the song had an author; it seemed as eternal and authorless as “Happy Birthday.”
But it did have an author, the singer and songwriter and actor Ed McCurdy (1919–2000). He grew up in Pennsylvania, then after high school became a nightclub singer and vaudeville performer (serenading the fan-dancer Sally Rand while pushing her on her swing). Later he hosted a show on Canadian radio, met a lot of American folksingers there, and became a folksinger himself and also a television and advertising personality. He retired as a vocal performer in the late 1960s for health reasons and had a second career as a character actor on Canadian television.
He wrote “Strangest Dream” in the spring of 1950. It has been recorded by performers including The Weavers and Simon & Garfunkel, and in seventy-six languages; is the theme song of the Peace Corps; and was sung by East German schoolchildren as they watched the dismantling of the Berlin Wall. Its lyrics are disarmingly simple, offering straightforward utopian vision: “I dreamed the world had all agreed / To put an end to war.” Nothing about how or when, nothing oppositional or analytic, just the vision, candidly identified as the speaker’s “strangest dream.”
Last night I had the strangest dream,
I’d ever dreamed before,
I dreamed the world had all agreed
To put an end to war.
I dreamed I saw a mighty room,
The room was full of men
And the Paper they were signing said
They’d never fight again.
And when the Paper was all signed,
And a million copies made,
They all joined hands and bowed their heads
And grateful prayers were prayed.
And the people in the streets below
Were dancing ’round and ’round,
While swords and guns and uniforms
Were scattered on the ground.
Last night I had the strangest dream,
I’d ever dreamed before,
I dreamed the world had all agreed
To put an end to war.
Last night I had the strangest dream,
I’d ever dreamed before,
I dreamed the world had all agreed
To put an end to war.