"Puff, the Magic Dragon" - Peter, Paul, and Mary

Peter, Paul, and Mary 25th Anniversary Concert

This was one of my favorite songs as a child. We would often sing together on long car trips and this song came up quite often. This performance of Puff by Peter, Paul, and Mary was filmed at their 25th Anniversary Concert in 1986.

And in case you're curious like me, here's the story of how "Puff, the Magic Dragon" came to be. In 1959, a 19-year-old student named Leonard Lipton was inspired by an Ogden Nash poem to write his own poem about an ageless dragon and his playmate, little Jackie Paper, called "Puff, the Magic Dragon". Lipton was friends with Peter Yarrow's housemate and used Yarrow's typewriter to write down the poem. 

He then forgot about the poem until several years later when he heard Yarrow was looking for him to give him credit for writing the lyrics to a song Yarrow had composed. While the lyrics have changed slightly over the years to include both girls and boys, one verse from the original poem never made it's way into the song. In it, Puff found a new playmate sometime after Jackie left and was happy once again. The original typed poem has been lost, but the song remains popular today.

Peter Yarrow was one of the three members of the folk group Peter, Paul, and Mary alongside Mary Travers and Noel Paul Stookey. He passed away yesterday at the age of 86.