FULLER UP HOME GRIM REAPER PAGE CAUSES OF DEATH SEARCH BY NAME GET IN TOUCH SHAMEFUL DISCLAIMER    Fuller Up The Dead Musician Directory    Ed McCurdy Ed McCurdy March 23, 2000 Age 81  Congestive Heart Failure    OBITUARY  BIOGRAPHY   LINKS  Buy or Hear the Music         Editor's Pick:  Cowboy Songs

OBITUARY 

Prominent folksinger McCurdy dies at 81 By Stephen Pedersen / Arts Reporter   American-born Canadian folksinger Ed McCurdy, a pioneer of the   folksinging movement going back to the late 1940s, died of congestive   heart failure in the Queen Elizabeth II Health Sciences Centre in   Halifax Thursday morning. He was 81.  In failing health the last few years, McCurdy, who has lived in   Halifax since 1982, and became a Canadian citizen in 1986, will be   remembered for his rich, powerful baritone voice, and his many   recordings as one of the most recorded folk artists in North America.   His most famous song is "Last Night I Had The Strangest Dream", an   anthem of the folk era.  Copyright © 2000 The Halifax Herald Limited   NY TIMES           Ed McCurdy, 81, Folk Music Figure of the 50's              By NEIL STRAUSS                 Ed McCurdy, a singer and songwriter who was a leading folk music                 figure in the 1950's, died on March 23.             He was 81 and lived in Halifax, Nova Scotia.             At the height of the Depression, Mr. McCurdy left his family farm in            Willow Hill, Pa., at 18 to become a gospel singer in Manhattan. He slept            on floors and went days without food but always managed to pay for            voice lessons. He left Manhattan and traveled across the nation, working            as a gospel singer and announcer on various radio stations.             Influenced by Frank Sinatra, he decided to leave gospel for the secular            pop world and try his luck as a nightclub singer. He headed north this            time, working in Niagara Falls and Toronto. At a show in Vancouver, he            met a dancer who was celebrating her 20th birthday with her fiancée.            Three years later, that dancer became Mr. McCurdy's wife, Beryl.             In addition to his wife, he is survived by a son, Jim; two daughters, Dana            and Maggie; and three grandchildren, all of New York.             Mr. McCurdy received his first break when Sally Rand, the burlesque            queen, hired him to sing romantic baritone songs in her act.             Mr. McCurdy anticipated the revival of folk music and turned to it in the            mid-1940's.             In 1950 he performed in a series of shows at the Village Vanguard in            New York and released his first folk album, "Ed McCurdy Sings Songs            of the Canadian Maritimes." That year he also wrote "(Last Night I Had)            the Strangest Dream," in which he fantasized about a worldwide peace            agreement.             In 1954 Mr. McCurdy, then living in Manhattan, cemented his reputation            through a recording deal with Elektra Records, collaborating with Oscar            Brand and Jack Elliott on "Bad Men and Heroes." At the same time he            maintained a side career as an actor and announcer on children's            television shows. His album series of bawdy English songs, "When            Dalliance Was in Flower and Maidens Lost Their Heads," became a            campus favorite in the late 50's. Simon and Garfunkel, Johnny Cash, Arlo            Guthrie, the Weavers, Pete Seeger and Joan Baez recorded his songs.             As new voices and ideas took over the folk movement, his career began            to wane, though he remained an elder statesmen. In 1984 he moved to            Halifax, where he continued to record albums and perform on the folk            circuit and made a new career for himself as a character actor on            Canadian television dramas.

 

 

BIOGRAPHY

All-Music Guide    For a time during the late 1950s and early 1960s, Ed McCurdy was one of the most popular solo   singers of the folk revival. In addition to recording two extremely popular albums, When Dalliance   Was In Flower, Vols. 1 and 2, McCurdy was also the author of "Last Night I Had the Strangest   Dream," a song that was widely covered by other singers.    Ed McCurdy started his career as a gospel singer in Oklahoma City, performing on radio station   WKY, and later became a theatrical and nightclub performer. His deep, rich tenor, somewhat   reminiscent of Pete Seeger or the young Burl Ives, proved well suited to folk songs, however, and he   began this new phase of his career on Canadian radio in 1946. McCurdy cut his first album, Ed   McCurdy Sings Songs of the Canadian Maritimes, in the early 1950s for the Whitehall label.   Beginning in 1952, he wrote and performed children's songs and programs on radio and television,   and two years later he moved to New York. In 1955, he cut his second album, The Ballad Record,   which was successful enough to justify more recordings, including Bar Room Ballads and A Ballad   Singer's Choice, over the next two years. His music included cowboy songs as well as traditional   folk ballads such as "Barbara Allen" and "Pretty Saro," plus the children's songs that had initially   made him a favorite among New York folk singers.    It was McCurdy's recordings of more risque folk material, however, that did the most to establish his   popularity, especially on college campuses, where the folk audience was branching off into more   serious and adult directions. Sing Songs was the first, but the record that sold beyond anyone's   expectation was When Dalliance Was In Flower, a 1957 release that, with its songs dwelling on   carnal lust, proved a major hit. For a time in the late 1950s and early 1960s, along with Oscar   Brand's various collections of "bawdy songs," When Dalliance Was In Flower was an almost   obligatory part of any college-age folk listener's collection, especially if they wanted to impress the   opposite sex with something besides singing. A second volume followed in 1958, and a year after   that McCurdy recorded yet another release in this vein, Son of Dalliance. All the while, McCurdy   continued to play to younger listeners, and their parents as well, with albums of children's songs.    In 1959, he performed at the Newport Folk Festival, and four of his songs appeared on the third   volume of Vanguard Records' Folk Festival at Newport. During the years that followed, McCurdy   played the Newport Festival twice more, but after 1960 he was increasingly overshadowed -- as   was the case for many singers of his generation -- by the next wave of folk-based topical   singer/songwriters, including Bob Dylan. He remained visible as a songwriter, however, as his song   "Last Night I Had the Strangest Dream," written in 1950, was recorded by the Chad Mitchell Trio in   a live version from the Bitter End, and later by artists such as Simon & Garfunkel on their first album,   Wednesday Morning 3 A.M. (that Simon & Garfunkel album was not a success on its initial release,   but with their subsequent success has probably sold over a half million copies). That song became   McCurdy's trademark, and the title track of his final album of new material, released in 1967 when   he was 45 years old. That same year, Elektra released The Best of Ed McCurdy. -- Bruce Eder,   All Music Guide

 

LINKS

Last Night I had the Strangest Dream

 

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