Ken and Sandie Hudson at The Bridge Folk Club – The Letter, Last Night I Had The Strangest Dream

Ken and Sandie Hudson at The Bridge Folk Club, 8 April 2024

The Letter (Boris Vian, 1954), Last Night I Had The Strangest Dream (Ed McCurdy, 1950)

Two superb anti-war songs

The Letter came from Boris Vian’s ‘Le Déserteur’ which he wrote in 1954 while French forces were fighting communist revolutionaries in the first Indochina War (which, to simplify a complicated history, developed into the Vietnam War). Le Déserteur’ was released at the culmination of the Battle of Dien Bien Phu, a massive victory for the communists that led to the fall of the French government

Ed McCurdy wrote Last Night I Had The Strangest Dream in 1950. In 1980 it became the official theme song of the American Peace Corps and in November 1989, while the Berlin Wall was being dismantled, NBC-TV cameras showed school children on the East German side of the Wall singing it. In 1992 it gained McCurdy the ‘Peace Abbey Courage of Conscience’ award