Gordon Lightfoot, Canadian Folk-Rock Troubadour, Dead at 84
“Lightfoot’s deceptively simple songs, which fused folk with pop and country rock, have been covered by everyone from Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Elvis Presley and Johnny Cash to the Grateful Dead, Barbra Streisand, Jerry Lee Lewis, Eric Clapton, Jimmy Buffett, and the Replacements.”
“I can’t think of any Gordon Lightfoot song I don’t like,” Bob Dylan once said. “Every time I hear a song of his, it’s like I wish it would last forever.”
My post from 2 summers ago: The SS Edmund Fitzgerald
“My family moved from Richmond, Virginia to Houghton Lake, Michigan in the fall of 1975. On November 10, 1975 the SS Edmund Fitzgerald sank on Lake Superior and it was big news in Michigan for a long while. In August the following year, Gordon Lightfoot released his iconic song “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald”. As a young boy I would sit on the dock in the evening and wait for the song to play on my little transistor radio. I would imagine the voyage while listening. This haunting event still holds my interest.”
Documentary on Amazon: Gordon Lightfoot: If You Could Read My Mind
Gord’s Gold comprehensive greatest hits CD (save a couple of bucks and buy used)
Gordon Lightfoot greatest hits on Spotify.