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The Night the Cold War Died
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The Night the Cold War Died |
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nedj Member
since 2006-06-23
Posts 87Oregon USA 
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The Night the Cold War DiedIn 1961 the East German government started work on the Berlin Wall. Not long afterward The Chad Mitchell Trio recorded their first album. Remember The Chad Mitchell Trio? The Mitchell Trio? Maybe this will help. When namesake tenor Chad Mitchell left the group, his replacement was another blond tenor, Henry John Deutschendorf Jr. You probably know him as John Denver. The connection between the trio and the Berlin Wall began when the original group recorded a song on that first album called "Last Night I Had the Strangest Dream." It was a pleasant little waltz about a dream in which the people of the world agreed to stop fighting. There was a room filled with men signing papers saying they would fight no more. Copies of the papers were made and sent around the world. The streets were filled with people, dancing with joy as they piled guns, swords and uniforms never to be used again. It was a lovely ditty with a joyous, if unlikely, story to tell and I loved it. Too bad it was so far fetched. It was more than twenty years before I heard it again. During the seventies, like most of the rest of the world, I forgot about that simple tune. We were all far too busy with Viet Nam, Watergate and the gasoline crisis. It wasn't until 1981, while glancing through a songbook on a friend's piano, that I ran across that dream again. It was a bittersweet reunion. The dream was at once more distant and yet somehow more believable than before. I tried to sing it that day but could not. I didn't know how to sing and cry at the same time. On November 9, 1989 the East German government lifted the ban on travel to the West and a flood of humanity swept through the wall for the first time in twenty seven years. Late on the evening of the 10th I watched a television special, live from the wall. At the end of the broadcast, as the credits rolled, I saw a group of East German school children. Their teacher had taken them on a field trip just across the wall, just to be there, just because they finally could. There they were, a couple of dozen of them, whose parents were themselves children when the wall was begun, and they were singing in German. I didn't understand the words, but it didn't matter; I recognized the tune. I began singing with them, "Last night I had the strangest dream I never had before. I dreamed the world had all agreed to put an end to war...." That's as far as I could go. I never did learn to sing and cry at the same time. |
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| © Copyright 2006 Ned Johnson - All Rights Reserved | |||
Midnitesun
since 2001-05-18
Posts 28647Gaia |
Thank you for this, Ned, and for the lovely reply you gave to my shalom shalom write. This prose piece gives me chills for several reasons, one being that as fourth grader, I started a school newspaper, and one of the things I wrote for the paper was a dream I had that all the guns of the world would be piled up into a monstrous mountain and then burned...all at once, and that humans would then forget how to make guns. The impetus for the dream write was my new found friendship with a girl from Japan, who I was helping to learn English. I started reading about WWII, and the bomb, and became angry that we humans could be so stupid. That was the beginining of a long journey for me, down the road to seeking Peace, through a long Ghandi pathway, now into the Dalai Lama and other 'means' to an end. Thank you, for the song, and I do remember it being something incredibly beautiful. My gun meltdown dream came to me in 50's. |
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nedj Member
since 2006-06-23
Posts 87Oregon USA |
Kacy: Thanks for the touching personal POV. As I may now be becoming (in)famous for, there is a rest of the story here, too. This one concerns the composer of the song. I have forgotten his name, but I talked to his publisher to get premission to include the lyrics in this piece. He told me that the song was actually copyrighted in 1950. The composer, then only 18 years old, was living in Greenwich Village. The song was recorded, at last count, by at least 17 artists, the first of which was the Weavers (Pete Seger, Eric Darling, et al) in the '50s. What happened next is utterly appalling to any self-respecting American. This gentle, peaceful young man was so badly maligned by the powers that be (read Joseph McCarthy and friends) that he was forced to flee to Canada. He never returned to his homeland for fear of reprisals. He lived out his life in a small community in either Newfoundland or Nova Scotia, I forget which, an exile. What a travesty. And to think, the people who drove him away got off scott free. Had I not written this piece, I never would have known any of that. A poem's just a poet in a word. |
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Midnitesun
since 2001-05-18
Posts 28647Gaia |
Ed McCurdy was his name according to the net site I looked at, and was probably first recorded in 1951. Well, I have to scoot, as I work the graveyard shift, but will read here again tomorrow. Thanks for the background story. |
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nedj Member
since 2006-06-23
Posts 87Oregon USA |
You got it right, it was Ed McCurdy. Thanks for the reminder. A poem's just a poet in a word. |
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Martie
Moderator
Member Empyrean
since 1999-09-21
Posts 28049California |
Ned Music is a powerful tool and as you have so deftly shown in this piece, it is universal and moves across time. It frightens me the flow the go of it in red wet dirt Stop Too fast the hate can’t wait to take I see a fist rising from the nest where babies are blessed How many quiet voices know how to sing If music could bring Peace Peace the song to world a hymn of grace ------ Thank you for writing this.  |
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fractal007 Senior Member
since 2000-06-01
Posts 1958 |
A very touching piece. I've always found myself that songs inspire the greatest emotional response in me, simply because songs are always so easilly tied to real events and times in my life or in my experience of world events. Sounds like you get the same vibes. Loved the story and I think I will be adding it to my connection. Any idiot can see that the result is true. |
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Poet deVine
Administrator
Member Seraphic
since 1999-05-26
Posts 22612Hurricane Alley |
I enjoyed this also...I really would like to see you write something about Mr. McCurdy. Perhaps a fictional piece (changed names, etc) about the McCarthy era debacle. Your main character could be a gentle peace-loving songwriter who flees the country. I'd certainly read it!  |
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