GORDON LIGHTFOOT

On April 5, 2023 Harry Belafonte died

On May 1, 2023, Gordon Lightfoot died

On May 24, 2023, Anna Mae Bullock, aka Tina Turner died.

Thus the common show-biz

belief that deaths come in three

was fulfilled

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GORDON LIGHTFOOT

There are many singer/songwriters that hail from Canada, but without a doubt, the most proficient of them is Gordon Lightfoot. He may have written more well known songs than the rest combined. And these songs have not only been recorded by Lightfoot, they have been covered by countless artists. To put a tag on them, they fused folk with pop and country rock. Nothing pretentious. Just down-home songs anyone can identify with.

Take his ‘Early Morning Rain’. As sung by him, his rich baritone voice backed by his 12 string acoustic guitar stamps it as a Lightfoot hit. His lyrics stamps it as a piece of life a lot of us identify with.

Have you ever been away from home and lonesome.? Have you ever identified with Kristofferson ‘Sunday Morning Coming Down’? If so, you can also identify with Lightfoot’s ‘Early Morning Rain’? The first was written by an Rhodes scholar, ex Army helicopter pilot, working as a janitor Columbia Record in Nashville while trying to break through as a singer/songwriter, refusing to work in the well paying field of education lest it divert him from his dream in music. On Sundays, he walked the streets of Nashville for recreation.

The second by a Canadian lad who formal education ended with a study of jazz composition in Westlake College of Music in Los Angeles. On Sundays he would go out to the airport and watch the planes take off, knowing that one of those planes that would someday bring him back home to Canada. He always visioned taking a flight to Toronto in the early morning rain.

Both songs were hits for the composers, although for Lightfoot, not so much in the US. His biggest hit record in the US was ‘Sundown’. Not that he wasn’t known and liked in the US. He was played constantly and his albums were always popular, as was his concerts. Both songs had countless covers by a variety of big name artists from all genres. The cover of ‘Sunday Morning’ by Johnny Cash surpassed the original by Kristofferson. And the cover of ‘Early Morning Rain’ by Elvis Presley way surpassed the Lightfoot version and the cover by Peter, Paul, and Mary is the only Lightfoot composition to be a #1 hit in the US.

Lightfoot loved playing in front of live audiences. His tours included the US and Europe, as well as his beloved Canada. These tours were not only self-satisfying, they introduced his new songs and showed him what worked and what didn’t. The new revisions showed up in new albums. The tours were also fertile ground to work on new compositions.

I worked more Lightfoot concerts than any other musical entertainer. My first Lightfoot concerts, ten in all that week, came during the off-season at the Guthrie, my first year at the Guthrie. I worked at least two Lightfoot concerts every year until I retired, well over a hundred all toll. My last Lightfoot concerts were two were two sold-out (5,822 seat hall) at Northrop Auditorium just before I was forced to retire due to leukemia.

Up until then I had experienced good health, which was not the case for Gordon Lightfoot. The work, the hours, combined to sink him into alcoholism which sometimes clouded his mind, his talent, his relationships and weakened his immune system.

He was fortunate to have a caring brother to steer him, acting in the roles of stage/tour/business manager and guardian angel.

In addition to both being 12 string guitar virtuoso s, Gordon and Glen Campbell had something else in common, a mirror-image brother who was also their main man.

Gordon Lightfoot had attacks of Bells Palsy, a condition that left him unable to sing until it left him. He developed serious heart problems including a stroke which almost ended his career. Heart problems that eventually ended his life.

I witnessed some of his hard work to overcome the effects of the stroke. He was slated to give a concert at the State Theater in Minneapolis. The local hands were called in early in case the show had to be canceled and packed up. Lightfoot was on stage with his band. He had reversed his hands in his playing his guitar. Not that he would be able to handle more than a small strumming, an illusion of his usual work, while the real playing came from the guitarist in the band. His brother, watching in the empty house, gave the okay and the show went on that night with few of the audience ever the wiser about the change.

Lightfoot had so, so many admirers among his peers. In 2012, he joined a small group of Canadian performers, Paul Anka, Leonard Cohen and Joni Mitchell inducted into the US Songwriters Hall of Fame.

Anne Murray, a Canadian songstress, with 4 Grammys and over 56 million albums sold world wide said he was a role model for Canadian entertainers. “”He was really proud of the fact that he and I stayed at home and had international careers. Neither one of us wanted to go anywhere. He thought that was wonderful.”

Gordon Lightfoot was elated when Bob Dylan covered ‘Early Morning Rain’ in his album Self Portrait. He was really elated when Bob Dylan said Gordon Lightfoot was one of his favorite songwriters. Dylan said his personal Lightfoot favorites were ‘Shadows’, ‘If You Could Read My Mind’, and of course ‘Sundown’. Dylan said he liked listening to Lightfoot and wish the song would never end. Dylan, the first and only winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature based on his song lyrics, said, after Lightfoot’s death, that Lightfoot never made a bad song. Dylan mentioned the themes of loneliness and suffering in the search for happiness in relationships. He gave ‘ Sundown’ as an example.

The song is not about love but about jealousy. Jealousy of the lifestyle of a prostitute, Cathy Smith. The same Cathy Smith that would go to jail for supplying the lethal dose of heroin to John Belushi. At sundown, while he was busy working on new songs, she hit the bars to drink and carouse. Hardly a love song.

‘If you could read my mind’ is certainly his most personal song he wrote. The song came to him while sitting in an empty house in Toronto that he and his 1^st wife, Brita, had moved out of and he was now trying to sell. The year was 1969. The marriage had taken place in 1963 and deteriorated almost at once. The divorce came in 1973 and produced two children, Ingrid and Fred.

The song reflects his personal grief and loneliness and grief.

‘I will never be set free

As long as I’m a ghost

That you can’t see’

This song has been covered over 200 times by artists like Streisand, Glen Campbell, Johnny Mathis, and Johnny Cash.

Lightfoot liked railroads and wrote about Canadian railroads in songs like ‘Steel Rail Blues’, and the Canadian Railroad Trilogy, a work commissioned by the CBC in honor of Canada’s Centennial year. It depicts the optimism of the railroad age and the sweat and blood it took to build the railroad from ocean to ocean.

The legend lives on from the Chippewa on down
Of the big lake they call Gitche Gumee
Superior, they said, never gives up her dead
When the gales of November come early

The wreck of

the Edmund Fitzgerald

The Edmund Fitzgerald set off from the port of Superior, Wisconsin on 11/10/1975, carrying 26,116 long tons of taconite pellets that eventually would end up in a steel mill near Detroit, Michigan. The taconite was squeezed out of the leavings in the Mesabi Iron Range near Hibbing, Minnesota, the town where Robert Zimmerman, aka Bob Dylan was born and raised. It was converted to pellets in a smelting plant there and shipped by rail to Superior and loaded on the Fitzgerald. Big Fitz had logged 787 round trip voyages on the Great Lakes up until then and was the prima donna of the fleet.

The weather forecast was typical for November and the predicted storm was slated to miss the Lake altogether. It didn’t. It hit the Fitzgerald about 1am with vicious waves over ten feet tall. By 3am the winds were over 50 and carried a snow blizzard. Two other ships helped the Fitz to what would be a safe port, but at 9:30 pm all contact was lost. The Coast Guard radioed the two ships to start looking for survivors. There were no survivors.

On 11/14/75, the US Coast Guard found the wreck and determined that all hands, 29 veteran seamen had lost their lives. The bell from the ship is in the Mariner’s Church in Detroit and is tolled 29 times each dusk to honor the men of the Edmund Fitzgerald.

Gordon Lightfoot, who spent many hours of recreational sailing on Lake Superior, was inspired to write his ballad, ‘The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald’ after reading an article about it in the 11/24/75 issue of Newsweek. He wrote and recorded it December of 75.

Lightfoot says it is the favorite of all his songs that he wrote and recorded. He has very few people agree with him, citing his works and recordings like :Sundown’ and ‘If You Could Read My Mind’ as their favorite Lightfoot hits. This view is backed up by the lack of any major artists covering the song. But the view of being the favorite rings with the Mariner’s Church, aka Maritime Sailors’ Cathedral of Detroit.

May 1, 20, 2023

The bell of the Edmund Fitzgerald

Tolled

30 times instead of 29

The additional toll was to honor

the man who immortalized

it in song

Canada lost a hero

And all of us

lost a great

Artist