[1] Born to a farming family in Willow Hill, Pennsylvania, McCurdy left home at 18 to pursue a singing career.
[citation needed] He recorded many albums in the 1950s and 1960s for Elektra Records and Tradition Records, performed several times at the Newport Folk Festival, and was a well-known folk music artist throughout the 1950s and early 1960s, developing friendships with the younger folk set of Odetta, Bob Gibson, Erik Darling, Ramblin' Jack Elliott, and Josh White Jr.[citation needed] His widely covered anti-war song, "Last Night I Had the Strangest Dream", has been recorded in seventy-six languages (including covers by The Weavers in 1960, the Chad Mitchell Trio in 1962, Simon & Garfunkel in 1964, Cornelis Vreeswijk in 1964 (in Swedish), Hannes Wader in 1979 (in German), Johnny Cash in 2003, Garth Brooks in 2005, Serena Ryder in 2006, and Charles Lloyd in 2016).
His single "Miracle of the Wheat" released on Kapp Records in 1956 became a Christmas Tradition on Cincinnati Radio, played annually on WKRC-AM by broadcaster Stan Matlock.
In 1980, two of his compositions, "Last Night I Had the Strangest Dream" and "King's Highway", as recorded by his old friend Josh White Jr., became the official theme songs for the Peace Corps and VISTA, respectively.
[4][5] In the mid 1980s, he and his wife Beryl moved to Nova Scotia, where he enjoyed a second career as a character actor on Canadian television.