Gordon Lightfoot

Welcome to Rock and Roll Flashback!  I'm Jumpin' John, and in today's episode I will review the highlights of the legendary singer and songwriter, Canada's great troubadour, Gordon Lightfoot!

All podcasts on the Rock and Roll Flashback Podcast are produced by brothers-in-law Bill Price and "Jumpin' John" McDermott. The Podcast Theme Song, "You Essay", was written by John. It was initially recorded by Bill and John on April 1, 2004 with several revisions since then.
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Transcript

Thank you for that splendid introduction and welcome to Rock and Roll Flashback!  I'm Jumpin' John, and in today's episode I will review the highlights of the legendary singer and songwriter, Canada's great troubadour, Gordon Lightfoot!

Gordon Meredith Lightfoot, Jr. was born in Orillia, Ontario, Canada on November 17th, 1938.  As a youth Gordon was a talented boy soprano, singing in church at five years old and performing at numerous local competitions in the years that followed.  At the age of twelve, he won a Toronto Kiwanis Festival music contest for boys whose voices had not yet changed.  As a result of that win, in 1951 he made his first appearance at Toronto's Massey Hall.  That famous venue would become very familiar to Lightfoot, as he would ultimately play over 170 more times at Massey Hall throughout his career.  Gordon's voice did change, and as a teenager, Lightfoot learned piano and taught himself to play drums, percussion, and folk guitar.  He briefly performed with a folk group called the Teen Timers and also sang with a barbershop quartet.  After high school, Gordon Lightfoot moved to Los Angeles in 1958 to study jazz composition and orchestration for two years at Westlake College of Music.  To support himself while in California, Lightfoot sang on demonstration records and wrote, arranged, and produced commercial jingles.  Among his influences was the folk music of Pete Seeger, Bob Gibson, Ian & Sylvia Tyson, and The Weavers.  Living in Los Angeles, he became homesick for Canada, so he returned to Toronto in 1960 to focus his efforts on folk and country music.  That year he became a member of the Swinging Eight, the in-house vocal group on the popular Canadian television series Country Hoedown.  After two years he left the Swinging Eight and formed a duo with fellow singer Terry Whalen.  They called themselves the Two Tones, but their group was short-lived.  

In 1963, Lightfoot traveled in Europe.  For eight weeks he hosted BBC TV's Country and Western Show before returning to Canada in 1964.  By this time, he had begun playing occasional solo dates, and had a regional hit in Canada with the single "(Remember Me) I'm the One".  Gordon Lightfoot was also beginning to develop a reputation as a songwriter.  Ian & Sylvia Tyson brought his songs to the attention of their manager, Albert Grossman.  In 1965 Grossman signed Lightfoot to a management contract.  Grossman represented many prominent American folk performers and was also managing Bob Dylan at that time.  Ian and Sylvia recorded Lightfoot's "Early Morning Rain" and "For Lovin' Me", and a year later Peter, Paul & Mary recorded those same two songs.  Several other established artists began recording Gordon's songs.  Among them were Marty Robbins, Elvis Presley, Bob Dylan, Chad & Jeremy, the Clancy Brothers, Judy Collins, Richie Havens, and the Kingston Trio.  Marty Robbins had the most success, as in 1965 he hit #1 on the country charts with Gordon's "Ribbon of Darkness". 

Lightfoot's 1965 appearances at the Newport Folk Festival, on The Tonight Show starring Johnny Carson, and at New York's Town Hall increased his following and bolstered his reputation.  In 1966, he signed a recording contract with United Artists Records, and his first solo album, called Lightfoot!, earned favorable reviews.  It was a modest commercial success and brought him greater exposure as both a singer and a songwriter.  The album featured many now-famous songs, including "For Lovin' Me", "Early Morning Rain", "Steel Rail Blues", and "Ribbon of Darkness".  Here is an excerpt from Gordon's version of "Early Morning Rain":

To kick off Canada's Centennial year, the CBC commissioned Gordon Lightfoot to write a song, and he wrote the "Canadian Railroad Trilogy" for a special broadcast on January 1st, 1967.  Then between 1967 and 1969, Lightfoot would record three more studio albums and one live LP for United Artists.  They were entitled The Way I Feel, Did She Mention My Name?, Back Here on Earth, and the live recording, Sunday Concert.  Gordon was becoming a major star in his native Canada, where his albums often spun off hit singles.  His biggest hit of the era was a rendition of Bob Dylan's "Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues", which peaked at #3 on the Canadian charts in December 1965.  He also began headlining annually at Toronto's Massey Hall to sold-out crowds.  However, in the United States, Lightfoot was primarily known as a songwriter whose songs were best known as recordings by others.

In 1970, after Lightfoot's contract with United Artists ran out, he broke ties with Grossman and signed a new record deal with the Warner Brothers' Reprise label.  By the way, 1970 also happened to be the year that Bob Dylan dropped Grossman as manager.  Lightfoot's first album for Reprise, Sit Down Young Stranger, included more orchestration than his previous United Artists material.  In the US the album reached #12 on the Billboard 200 chart.  In Canada, the album was on the charts for eight months, peaking at #8 on March 13th, 1971.  In December 1970 the single "If You Could Read My Mind" was released.   It reached #1 on the Canadian Singles Chart and was Lightfoot's first US hit, reaching #5 on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart in February 1971.  Later in the year, it reached #27 on the Australian singles chart and #30 on the UK singles chart.  "If You Could Read My Mind" also reached #1 for one week on the Billboard Easy Listening chart.  

While Lightfoot had finally achieved international success, he continued to live and base his operations in Canada.  His next album, 1971's Summer Side of Life, featured several tunes focused on life in his homeland.  The Summer Side of Life LP reached #3 in Canada and #38 in the US.  In 1972, he released two albums.  The Don Quixote LP hit #1 in Canada and reached #42 in the US.  The single "Beautiful" was released from the album and peaked at #13 in Canada and #58 on the Billboard singles chart.  The Old Dan's Records LP also reached #1 in Canada on the RPM national album chart on November 25th, 1972, and remained there for three weeks.  In the U.S., it peaked at #95 on the pop chart.  Unfortunately, that year he was forced to cut back on his touring commitments after he was diagnosed with Bell's palsy.

On January 18th, 1974 Reprise released Gordon Lightfoot's ninth studio album.  It was entitled Sundown, and it was the only Lightfoot album to reach #1 on the pop albums chart in the US.   In Canada, it topped the RPM 100 for five consecutive weeks, first hitting #1 on June 22nd, 1974, the same day it reached the top of the chart in the US.  The single "Sundown" was released on March 25th, and it reached #1 on both the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 and Easy Listening charts.  It also hit #1 in Canada and reached #13 on the US Hot Country singles chart.  It would be Lightfoot's only single to reach #1 on the Hot 100.  "Carefree Highway" was the second single released from the album.  It peaked at #1 in Canada,  #10 on the Billboard Hot 100, and spent one week at #1 on the Easy Listening chart in October 1974.

Gordon Lightfoot had become disenchanted with the production and performances on his early albums, and the 1975 collection Gord's Gold featured new recordings of ten songs from his days at United Artists as well as 12 more recent hits.  1975 also saw the release of the LP called Cold on the Shoulder.  That album reached #3 in Canada and #10 in the US album charts.  It featured the song "Rainy Day People."  In 1976 Lightfoot released the album Summertime Dream.  It 

included the modern-day folk narrative song called "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald".  The song memorialized the sinking of the bulk carrier SS Edmund Fitzgerald in Lake Superior on November 10th, 1975.  Lightfoot considered "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" to be his finest work.  The single hit #1 in Canada on November 20th, 1976, barely a year after the disaster.  In the US it reached #1 in Cashbox and was #2 for two weeks in the Billboard Hot 100, making it Lightfoot's second-most successful single, behind only "Sundown".  However, it only peaked at #40 in the UK.  Gordon Lightfoot re-recorded the song in 1988 for the compilation album Gord's Gold, Volume 2.  In Season 2 of the TV show Severance, Dr. Mauer is shown whistling "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" as he wheels a cart down a hallway.

1978 saw the release of the album entitled Endless Wire.  That LP peaked at #22 on the Billboard 200 chart and #14 on the country album chart.  In Canada it reached #2 on the RPM album chart.  However, from 1978 onward, Lightfoot's presence on the singles charts began to fade.  While he continued to record and tour regularly, his stardom in the United States declined.  Nevertheless, his annual run of shows at Massey Hall confirmed his continuing popularity with Canadian audiences.  I should mention that Gordon Lightfoot didn't only write folk tunes.  In his thirteenth studio album, 1980's Dream Street Rose, he included a nice blues song called "Make Way For the Lady."  The Dream Street Rose LP hit #1 on the Canadian Country chart, but only reached #60 on the US Billboard 200 chart.  Released in 1982, Shadows was Lightfoot's fourteenth studio album.  It peaked at #87 on the Billboard charts.  The album marked another significant turning point in Lightfoot's musical evolution.  He moved further away from his acoustic roots through greater use of synthesizers and electric organ.  The single "Baby Step Back" peaked at #17 on the US Adult Contemporary chart and #50 on the Billboard Hot 100.  It also reached #6 on the Canadian Adult Contemporary chart.  "Baby Step Back" would be his last single to chart in the US.

In the 1980's Lightfoot began devoting more time to benefit shows for various charitable concerns, including world hunger and the environment.  He also tried out acting.  He starred in the 1982 film Harry Tracy, Desperado as a U.S. marshal, and he also played a country singer on the short-lived American television series Hotel in 1988.  

In 1986, Gordon Lightfoot was inducted by Bob Dylan into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame.  Lightfoot began experiencing a creative revival in the 1990's, recording two of his best-reviewed albums in decades, 1993's Waiting for You and 1998's A Painter Passing Through.  However, his career nearly came to a halt in early 2002 when he suffered an abdominal aortic aneurysm.   

In 2003, Gordon Lightfoot was named a Companion of the Order of Canada, the highest honor the nation bestows on civilians.  Early 2004 saw the release of Harmony, an album he had started working on before he fell ill, and by the end of the year he was back on the road.  Lightfoot experienced another health scare in the fall of 2006, when he suffered a minor stroke.  Fortunately, within six months he was able to play guitar again and continued to perform on a regular basis for several more years.  He usually averaged around sixty shows a year in a variety of venues.  In 2012, he released All Live, a collection of recordings from his many appearances at Massey Hall.  It was only his second live album in a career lasting over 40 years.  

Late in life, Gordon Lightfoot decided that he would take some unreleased song demos from 2001 and 2002 and re-record them, accompanied only by his acoustic guitar.  The result was his 2020 album, entitled Solo, his first studio album in 16 years.  He continued to tour but, due to declining health, played his final concert on October 30th, 2022, in Winnipeg.  Gordon Lightfoot died of natural causes in Toronto on May 1st, 2023, at the age of 84.  The Mariners' Church in 

Detroit honored Lightfoot the day after his death by ringing its bell a total of 30 times, 29 for each of the crewmen lost on the Edmund Fitzgerald, and the final time for Lightfoot himself.

I first became aware of Gordon Lightfoot back in 1968.  A friend of mine, who I shall call Lorraine, told me that she had just listened to a wonderful album by a Canadian singer named Gordon Lightfoot.  The album she referenced was Gordon's third LP, entitled Did She Mention My Name.  I then found a vinyl copy, listened to it, and was equally impressed with his singing and songwriting.  I even purchased the piano songbook for that album, no doubt hoping to impress Lorraine some day by playing those songs on piano.  I never got the chance to play the songs for her, but my interest in Lightfoot continued.  I have always admired his consistently well-crafted songs, and I eventually turned my wife, Sally, on to Gordon Lightfoot.  Over the years Sally and I would purchase multiple Lightfoot vinyl records, CD's, and songbooks.  Then on June 16th, 2018, fifty years after I first encountered his music, Sally and I had the pleasure of seeing 79 year old Gordon Lightfoot perform in person with his band on the campus of Penn State University. 

One year after Gordon's death, The Lightfoot Days Festival committee gathered in front of the "Golden Leaves" sculpture of Gordon Lightfoot in Orillia, Ontario's Tudhope Park.  They were there to honor the life and legacy of the beloved singer one year after his death.  On that occasion Orillia Mayor Don McIsaac said [and I quote] "Gordon Lightfoot was more than just a musician.  He was a storyteller; he captured the essence of Canada and its people" [end quote]. 

Gordon Lightfoot's lyrics were literate while remaining down to earth.  His lyrics dealt with personal matters as well as global issues in a manner that was poetic and accessible.  Lightfoot's 12 string guitar and rich, strong baritone singing voice were a perfect match for his material.  He had the uncanny ability to merge beautiful, lush melodies with those provocative lyrics.  Gordon always surrounded himself with a top notch backing band, and together they produced masterful recordings and live performances.  Gordon Lightfoot was Canada's most successful contemporary folk artist, establishing himself as an important songwriter in the mid-1960's and becoming a major international recording star in the following decade.

Thank you for listening to another episode of Rock and Roll Flashback podcast.  I will close this podcast with a track from Gordon Lightfoot's fourth studio album Back Here On Earth:  a 1968 song called "Affair on 8th Avenue".  I'm Jumpin' John McDermott, and until next time...Rock On!