My song today is ‘Mr. Sandman’. This song was written by Pat Ballard and was published in 1954. It was first recorded in May of that year by ‘Vaughn Monroe & His Orchestra’ and later that same year by ‘The Chordettes’ and ‘The Four Aces’. The song's lyrics convey a request to ‘Mr. Sandman’ to "bring me a dream" refers to the traditional association with the folkloric figure, ‘the sandman’. The pronoun used to refer to the desired dream is often changed depending on the sex of the singer or group performing the song, as the original sheet music publication, which includes male and female versions of the lyrics, intended. Emmylou Harris’ recording of the song was a hit in multiple countries in 1981
In December 1954, the song reached Number 1 on the ‘Cash Box Top 50’. It also reached many more successful positions in different charts.
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The very first time I ever heard this song was shortly after coming out of a coma as an in-patient at the old Batley Hospital in West Yorkshire. A month earlier, I had been knocked over by a wagon and finished up in hospital fighting for my life with multiple life-threatening injuries; the worse injury being a damaged spine that led the doctors to tell me and my parents that I would never walk again.
I was in the hospital for nine months. By my time I was discharged, I could feel pain in my broken legs, where previously my damaged spine had lost all body feeling beneath my waistline. Pain in my legs was a beautiful feeling for me. It meant that though my legs remained twisted and badly damaged, they were alive once more! It would be another thirty months before I could hobble around on my legs; having had one of my knees broken in six places, followed by fifty-three leg operations to correct before my thirteenth birthday.
During my first six months in hospital, my other body injuries above my waist level (collapsed rib cage and punctured lungs, with 22 of my 24 chest ribs broken and other broken limbs and bones) produced so much pain that I hardly slept.
Around 10:00 pm, the hospital lights would be switched off and all other patients on the hospital ward would go to sleep. I had too much pain in my body to enable me to sleep and would stay awake throughout the night as other patients nearby slept soundly as they snored, farted and coughed like only heavy smokers can in their sleep. Occasionally, I would see two nurses silently scurry as they helped the mortician remove a patient from his bed in the dark of night and take him to the morgue before the other patients woke up around 7:00 am. By the time the other ward patients woke up and opened their eyes, someone might ask, “Where’s Fred gone? He was here last night!”. Then seeing the empty bed had been remade for the next occupant all would gradually cotton on that poor Fred hadn’t made it through the night.
I would have already done my grieving four hours earlier as my ward neighbours slept on in innocent oblivion to the life and death that surrounded them. My wracked body would be so tired with sleep loss that I’d simply close my eyes and drift off to sleep until the early noon as I muttered a prayer form poor Fred.
This song often irritated me as the sandman never came to me during those long, lonely nights I was wide awake in my hospital bed.
Love and peace Bill xxx