{"id":21612,"date":"2018-11-24T08:23:11","date_gmt":"2018-11-24T13:23:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/?p=21612"},"modified":"2020-03-26T03:12:50","modified_gmt":"2020-03-26T07:12:50","slug":"canadas-gordon-lightfoot-turns-80","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/2018\/11\/24\/canadas-gordon-lightfoot-turns-80\/","title":{"rendered":"Canada’s Gordon Lightfoot turns 80"},"content":{"rendered":"
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50 years ago in 1968, Gordon Lightfoot released the album Back Here on Earth for United Artists. Photo of album cover by James Morgan<\/p><\/div>\n

It seems appropriate that the man who wrote and performed The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald<\/em> was born in November, the month in 1975 when the famous maritime disaster happened on Lake Superior.<\/p>\n

Gordon Lightfoot turned 80 on November 17.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll fully disclose my fan bias right away.\u00a0 I\u2019ve been a fan since I was about 13 years old.\u00a0 I have every album he\u2019s ever recorded.<\/p>\n

But, aside from that, like him or not, Lightfoot, along with Anne Murray, are the personification of Canadian popular music in the second half of the 20th<\/sup> Century.\u00a0 They brought Canadian music onto radio stations, stereos, and concert stages across the country and around the world.<\/a><\/a><\/p>\n

Gordon Lightfoot was born in Orillia, Ontario, a small city where Lakes Simcoe and Couchiching meet.\u00a0 It was also the basis for the fictional town of Mariposa, made famous in the book Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town<\/em> by economist turned humorist (a rare combination), Stephen Leacock.\u00a0 He got his start singing in church and school choirs.<\/p>\n

In the late 1950s, Lightfoot moved down Highway 11 to Toronto, working as a bank teller, but aspiring to become the next big singer-songwriter.\u00a0 He studied at a music school in Los Angeles but never graduated.\u00a0 His early sounds experimented with borderline bubblegum pop with a rarity called Daisy Doo<\/em> or country in the slow style of Jim Reeves or Bill Anderson with early numbers like Remember Me, I\u2019m the One <\/em>and It\u2019s Too Late, He Wins<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Gordon Lightfoot talking with Alex Trebek, then the host of CBC-TV’s\u00a0Music Hop–<\/em>a sort of Canadian counterpart to\u00a0American Bandstand,\u00a0<\/em>in 1963:<\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.cbc.ca\/player\/play\/1236884035786<\/a><\/p>\n

Lightfoot landed a gig as part of the \u201csinging, swinging eight\u201d, a group of square dancers and singers on CBC-TV\u2019s Country Hoedown<\/em>.\u00a0 Lightfoot ended up finding his stylistic groove in the popularity of modern folk during the early 1960s, playing in the legendary coffee houses of Yorkville, Toronto\u2019s Haight-Ashbury, or at Steele\u2019s Tavern, a bar on the popular Yonge Street strip.<\/p>\n

In those days, Lightfoot wrote songs like In the Early Morning Rain, <\/em>and That\u2019s What You Get for Lovin\u2019 Me<\/em>.\u00a0 Those songs ended up being covered by the likes of fellow Canadians Ian and Sylvia, Peter, Paul, and Mary, and even Elvis Presley.<\/p>\n

Lightfoot\u2019s first major record deal was with United Artists.\u00a0 His manager was Albert Grossman, who also managed Bob Dylan, The Band, and Ian and Sylvia.\u00a0 The albums from the United Artists years have a pure folk sound.\u00a0 Dylan had already gone electric, but Lightfoot was acoustic.<\/p>\n

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The album cover of 1974’s Sundown. Note that Lightfoot is sitting in a barn full of straw with a lit cigarette. Photo of album cover by James Morgan<\/p><\/div>\n

In 1970, Lightfoot switched labels and went to Warner Reprise and later Warner Brothers.\u00a0 Those were his most successful years internationally.\u00a0 The height of it was in June 1974 when Sundown<\/em> reached #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.\u00a0 Two weeks earlier, Paul McCartney and Wings were at #1 with Band on the Run.<\/em><\/p>\n

Being a star has its personal costs though, and Lightfoot is no exception.\u00a0 There was alcoholism, drugs, and a string of broken relationships.\u00a0 He\u2019s been married three times and has six children with four different mothers.\u00a0 In the 1970s, Lightfoot was involved with Cathy Smith, who after leaving Lightfoot, became a drug dealer and fatally injected John Belushi with heroin in 1982.\u00a0 She served 15 months for involuntary manslaughter.\u00a0 The relationship between Lightfoot and Smith is said to be what inspired the lyrics of Sundown<\/em> and other songs from that time.<\/p>\n

In 2002, Lightfoot nearly died of an aneurysm that occurred while he was rehearsing for a show at the historic opera house in Orillia.\u00a0 He spent several months in hospital recovering.<\/p>\n

Aside from problems, there is something quintessentially Canadian about Lightfoot\u2019s music and how it reflects his personality.\u00a0 He\u2019s never been the source of tabloid rumors.\u00a0 He rarely gives interviews and doesn\u2019t answer fan mail (I\u2019ve tried).\u00a0 He\u2019s like a regular guy from Orillia who just happens to be an internationally renowned singer-songwriter.\u00a0 He comes across as being no different from a next-door neighbor who could be a plumber or teacher.\u00a0 The vocals can be understated, but always measured.\u00a0 The lyrics are often reflective of personal experiences or observations.\u00a0 Nothing is bold though because good English Canadians don\u2019t do that.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s an endearing imagery of nature, history, and Canadian life in many Lightfoot songs.\u00a0 Long River, The Canadian Railroad Trilogy, Saturday Clothes, Seven Island Suite, I\u2019m Not Sayin\u2019, and Did She Mention My Name? <\/em>all have this feel.\u00a0 Granted, it is a particularly Ontario-centric one I\u2019ve always thought.<\/p>\n

In true Canadian fashion, Lightfoot\u2019s brand of folk has never been overtly political.\u00a0 Sure, he wrote Black Day in July<\/em> in response to the 1967 race riot in Detroit, and the Vietnam war was thinly implied in Sit Down Young Stranger<\/em>, and Summer Side of Life, <\/em>but Canada had very little stake in those events.\u00a0 It just never seemed right for Canadians to try and sing about America\u2019s problems.<\/p>\n

A happy, slightly belated 80th<\/sup> birthday to Gordon Lightfoot.\u00a0 Thank you for being such a big part of Canada\u2019s national soundtrack.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It seems appropriate that the man who wrote and performed The Wreck of the Edmund […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":112,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[17338,17339,16997],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21612"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/112"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21612"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21612\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21903,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21612\/revisions\/21903"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21612"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21612"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21612"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}