Australian singles chart:
Puff, the Magic Dragon entered the Kent charts on 6 April 1963 and peaked at #6. It was #57 on the Top 100 of 1963.
Album:
The song is on Moving which charted in Australia in 1963.
Songwriters:
Leonard Lipton, Peter Yarrow
Producer:
Albert Grossman
Record label of Australian release:
Warner Bros
Wikipedia:
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 The Tale of 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 moves on from the imaginary adventures of childhood, leaving a disheartened Puff on his own. The song’s story takes place “by the sea” in the fictional land of “Honah Lee”.
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.
After the song’s initial success, speculation arose that the song contained veiled references to smoking marijuana. Yarrow and Lipton have repeatedly rejected this interpretation and have strongly and consistently denied that they intended any references to drug use. Yarrow has frequently explained that the song is about the hardships of growing older and has no relationship to drug-taking.
Read more: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puff,_the_Magic_Dragon
Lyrics:
Puff, the magic dragon
Lived by the sea
And frolicked in the autumn mist
In a land called Honalee
Little Jackie Paper
Loved that rascal Puff
And brought him strings and sealing wax
And other fancy stuff
Click for full lyrics
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