Puff, the Magic Dragon facts for kids
Quick facts for kids "Puff, the Magic Dragon" |
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| Single by Peter, Paul and Mary | ||||
| from the album Moving | ||||
| B-side | "Pretty Mary" | |||
| Released | January 1963 | |||
| Recorded | 1962 | |||
| Genre | Pop, folk | |||
| Length | 3:20 | |||
| Label | Warner Bros. | |||
| Songwriter(s) | Leonard Lipton Peter Yarrow |
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| Producer(s) | Albert Grossman | |||
| Peter, Paul and Mary singles chronology | ||||
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"Puff, the Magic Dragon" (or just "Puff") is a song written by Peter Yarrow of Peter, Paul and Mary from a poem by Leonard Lipton. It was made popular by Yarrow's group in a 1962 recording released in January 1963.
Lipton wrote a poem about a dragon in 1959, and when Yarrow found it, he wrote the lyrics to "Puff" based on the poem. After the song was released, Yarrow searched for Lipton to give him credit for the song.
Contents
Lyrics
The lyrics for "Puff, the Magic Dragon" are based on a 1959 poem by Leonard Lipton, then a 19-year-old Cornell University student. Lipton was inspired by an Ogden Nash poem titled "Custard the Dragon", about a "realio, trulio little pet dragon".
The lyrics tell a story of the ageless dragon Puff and his playmate, Jackie Paper, a little boy who grows up and loses interest in the imaginary adventures of childhood and leaves Puff to be with himself. The story of the song takes place "by the sea" in the fictional land of "Honalee".
Lipton was friends with Yarrow's housemate when they were all students at Cornell. He used Yarrow's typewriter to get the poem out of his head. He then forgot about it until years later, when a friend called and told him Yarrow was looking for him, to give him credit for the lyrics. On making contact, Yarrow gave Lipton half the songwriting credit, and he still gets royalties from the song.
Yarrow now sings the line "A dragon lives forever, but not so little boys" as "A dragon lives forever, but not so girls and boys", to be fair to boys and girls. The original poem also had a stanza that was not incorporated into the song. In it, Puff found another child and played with him after returning. Neither Yarrow nor Lipton remembers the verse in any detail, and the paper that was left in Yarrow's typewriter in 1958 has since been lost.
Notable recordings and chart performance
In 1961, Peter Yarrow joined Paul Stookey and Mary Travers to form Peter, Paul and Mary. The group incorporated the song into their live performances before recording it in 1962. The trio's 1962 recording of "Puff the Magic Dragon" entered the top 40 of the Billboard Hot 100 charts on March 30, 1963, and peaked at number two, kept out of the top spot by "I Will Follow Him" by Little Peggy March. It topped Billboard's Adult Contemporary charts. It also reached number ten on Billboard's R&B chart. In Canada, the song reached number four in April 1963.
Weekly charts
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Year-end charts
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Adaptations
A 1978 animated television special, Puff the Magic Dragon, adapted the song. It was followed by two sequels, Puff the Magic Dragon in the Land of the Living Lies and Puff and the Incredible Mr. Nobody. In all three films, Burgess Meredith voiced Puff. In December 2016, it was announced that Fox Animation would produce a live-action/animation film based on the song with Mike Mitchell as director.
The song was adapted for a children's pantomime, which played at Sydney's Seymour Centre in 1983.
In September 1979, a picture-book version of the short used pictures based on the animated feature. It was published by Avon Books and dedicated to Peter, Paul, and Mary. The book featured words and sheet music to several songs that were featured in the short at the back of the book. This included "The Boat Song" and "Weave Me the Sunshine". The book also used the original song throughout the book as the short had.
In 2007, jazz pianist Jason Rebello recorded and released an album entitled Jazz Rainbow featuring the song "Puff, the Magic Dragon" arranged for a jazz trio.
A 2007 book adaptation of the song's lyrics by Yarrow, Lipton, and illustrator Eric Puybaret gives the story a happier ending with a young girl (presumed by reviewers to be Jackie Paper's daughter) seeking out Puff to become her new companion. The lyrics remain unchanged from the Peter, Paul, and Mary version; the young girl is only seen in the pictures by illustrator Puybaret. On the last page of the book, she is introduced to Puff by an older Jackie Paper.
The tune was used by Versatec, a computer printer company, in the promotional LP Push the Magic Button for the song of the same name.
Vietnam War-era gunship
During the Vietnam War the AC-47 Spooky gunship was nicknamed the "Dragon" or "Dragon ship" by the Americans because of its armament and firepower—the nickname soon caught on, and American troops began to call the AC-47 "Puff the Magic Dragon." Robert Mason's Chickenhawk states, in reference to the Peter, Paul, and Mary song playing on a turntable: "'Puff the Magic Dragon' was making me uncomfortable. It was the saccharine song that had inspired the naming of the murderous Gatling-gun-armed C-47s. I couldn't listen."
See also
In Spanish: Puff, the Magic Dragon para niños
