I was doing some reading on various blogs for NateatNight.com and I started doing some reading about Dion McGregor. Apparently he’s the world’s most renowned sleep talker. I have to warn you though, his stuff is a bit more disturbing and perverse than the stuff you’re used to listening to on Nate at Night. There is a quick reference to Dion McGregor under the subject of “sleep-talking” on wikipedia. Some of the stats on Sleep Talking are quite interesting. The article simply says this about Mr. McGregor:
One famous sleep talker is Dion McGregor, a man who became something of an underground celebrity when his roommate Michael Barr recorded his nightly soliloquies (which were often hilariously detailed), which were then released as a series of albums in the 60’s.
Dion McGregor
I’m still gong to warn you, his stuff is pretty crass. His history is a bit weird as well. He’s was a typical 60’s hippie, looking for his big break in the music scene. He never really made it. In fact, his sleep recordings did much better than his music ever did, mostly due to their shock value.
The Wikipedia Article gives a bit more insight into his life.
Dion McGregor (1922–1994) was a New York City-born songwriter, whose main claim to fame is that he was a voluble dreamer, or somniloquist. As a songwriter, McGregor’s biggest success came when his song “Where Is The Wonder” (cowritten with roommate Michael Barr) was recorded by Barbra Streisand on her hit album My Name Is Barbra (1965). He was unable to find much success afterwards, however, and by the 1980’s had given up on songwriting.
Critic Joslyn Layne writes that “Despite his lack of success as a song lyricist, McGregor’s narration of his vivid dreamlife provided a more unique artistic contribution than any usually recorded.” McGregor talked in his sleep. Not in quiet, barely-comprehensible mumbles: while he slept, McGregor would essentially narrate his dreams at conversational volume. As a narrator of his (often terrifying) dreams, Dion adopted various personas but frequently established a fey, argumentative, insolent approach to the subject at hand – be it a hot air balloon trip to the moon with a group of multi-ethnic children, a frantic journey around New York, or a tattooing job on a woman’s tongue. As Phil Milstein notes, the Tzadik LP could just as well be called Dion McGregor Screams Again, as most of McGregor’s dream narratives end with him shrieking in terror.
An LP of his dream diatribes – The Dream World Of Dion McGregor (He Talks In His Sleep) – was even released to minor acclaim by Decca Records in 1964. A book of the same name, containing the transcripts of a wider selection of McGregor’s dreams, and with illustrations by Edward Gorey, was also published in 1964. McGregor died in 1994, but researcher Phil Milstein gathered recordings of McGregor’s dream-speech considered too risque to be released in the 1960s and assembled them for the 1999 album, Dion McGregor Dreams Again, released on Tzadik Records. A third album, The Further Somniloquies of Dion McGregor: More Outrageous Recordings of the World’s Most Renowned Sleeptalker was assembled by Toronto poet Steve Venright and released in August 2004 on the Torpor Vigil Industries label.
Below is a picture of the cover of his 1964 album. 
The cover of “The Dream World of Dion McGregor (He Talks In His Sleep)”
Who knows maybe someday the internet will be rife with a creepy picture of me on there…you never know.
Tags: Dion McGregor, dreamer, sleep recording, sleep talk recording, sleep talking, somniloquy
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