Gordon Lightfoot
Gordon Meredith Lightfoot Jr. CC OOnt (November 17, 1938 – May 1, 2023) was a Canadian singer-songwriter and guitarist who achieved international success in folk, folk-rock, and country music. He is credited with helping to define the folk-pop sound of the 1960s and 1970s.[1] He has been referred to as Canada's greatest songwriter[2] and his songs have been recorded by some of the world's most renowned musical artists.[3] Lightfoot's biographer Nicholas Jennings said, "His name is synonymous with timeless songs about trains and shipwrecks, rivers and highways, lovers and loneliness."[4]
Gordon Lightfoot
Gordon Meredith Lightfoot Jr.
November 17, 1938
Orillia, Ontario, Canada
May 1, 2023 (aged 84)
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
- Singer-songwriter
- guitarist
- Vocals
- guitar
- piano
- percussion
1958–2023
The Two Tones
Lightfoot's songs, including "For Lovin' Me", "Early Morning Rain", "Steel Rail Blues", "Ribbon of Darkness"—a number one hit on the U.S. country chart[5] with Marty Robbins's cover in 1965—and "Black Day in July", about the 1967 Detroit riot, brought him wide recognition in the 1960s. Canadian chart success with his own recordings began in 1962 with the No. 3 hit "(Remember Me) I'm the One", followed by recognition and charting abroad in the 1970s. He topped the US Hot 100 or Adult Contemporary (AC) chart with the hits "If You Could Read My Mind" (1970), "Sundown" (1974); "Carefree Highway" (1974), "Rainy Day People" (1975), and "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" (1976), and had many other hits that appeared in the top 40.[6]
Several of Lightfoot's albums achieved gold and multi-platinum status internationally. His songs have been recorded by many notable artists.[7] The Guess Who recorded a song called "Lightfoot" on their 1968 album Wheatfield Soul; the lyrics contain many Lightfoot song titles.
Robbie Robertson of the Band described Lightfoot as "a national treasure".[8] Bob Dylan, also a Lightfoot fan, called him one of his favourite songwriters and said, "I can't think of any Gordon Lightfoot song I don't like. Every time I hear a song of his, it's like I wish it would last forever.... ".[9] Lightfoot was a featured musical performer at the opening ceremonies of the 1988 Winter Olympic Games in Calgary, Alberta and has received numerous honours and awards.
Early life, family and education[edit]
Lightfoot was born in Orillia, Ontario, on November 17, 1938,[10][11] to Jessie Vick Trill Lightfoot and Gordon Lightfoot Sr.,[10] who owned a local dry cleaning business.[12] He was of Scottish descent.[13] He had an older sister, Beverley (1935–2017).[14] His mother recognized Lightfoot's musical talent early on and schooled him to become a successful child performer. He first performed publicly in grade four, singing the Irish-American lullaby "Too Ra Loo Ra Loo Ral", which was broadcast over his school's public address system[12] during a parents' day event.[15]
As a youth, he sang in the choir of Orillia's St. Paul's United Church under the direction of choirmaster Ray Williams. According to Lightfoot, Williams taught him how to sing with emotion and how to have confidence in his voice.[16] Lightfoot was a boy soprano; he appeared periodically on local Orillia radio, performed in local operettas and oratorios, and gained exposure through various Kiwanis music festivals. At the age of twelve, after winning a competition for boys whose voices had not yet changed, he made his first appearance at Massey Hall in Toronto, a venue he would ultimately play over 170 more times throughout his career.[17]
As a teenager, Lightfoot learned piano and taught himself to play drums and percussion. He held concerts in Muskoka, a resort area north of Orillia, singing "for a couple of beers".[18] Lightfoot performed extensively throughout high school, Orillia District Collegiate & Vocational Institute (ODCVI), and taught himself to play folk guitar. A formative influence on his music at this time was 19th-century master American songwriter Stephen Foster.[19] He was also an accomplished high school track-and-field competitor, setting school records for shot-put and pole vault.[20]
Lightfoot moved to Los Angeles in 1958 to study jazz composition and orchestration for two years at Westlake College of Music.[21]
Career[edit]
Beginnings[edit]
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.[22] He lived in Los Angeles for a time, but he missed Toronto and returned there in 1960,[23] living in Canada thereafter, though he did much work in the United States, under an H-1B visa.[24]
After his return to Canada, Lightfoot performed with the Singin' Swingin' Eight, a group featured on CBC TV's Country Hoedown, and with the Gino Silvi Singers. He soon became known at Toronto folk music-oriented coffee houses.[25][26] In 1961, Lightfoot released two singles, both recorded at RCA in Nashville and produced by Chet Atkins,[27] that were local hits in Toronto and received some airplay elsewhere in Canada and the northeastern United States. "(Remember Me) I'm the One" reached No. 3 on CHUM radio in Toronto in July 1962 and was a top 20 hit on Montreal's CKGM, then a very influential Canadian Top 40 radio station.[28] The follow-up single was "Negotiations"/"It's Too Late, He Wins"; it reached No. 27 on CHUM in December. He sang with Terry Whelan in a duo called the Two-Tones/Two-Timers. They recorded a live album that was released in 1962 called Two-Tones at the Village Corner (1962, Chateau CLP-1012).[29]
In 1963, Lightfoot travelled in Europe and for one year in the UK he hosted BBC TV's Country and Western Show,[30] returning to Canada in 1964. He appeared at the Mariposa Folk Festival and began to develop a reputation as a songwriter. Ian and Sylvia Tyson recorded "Early Mornin' Rain" and "For Lovin' Me"; a year later both songs were recorded by Peter, Paul and Mary; other performers who recorded one or both of these songs included Elvis Presley, Bob Dylan, Chad & Jeremy, George Hamilton IV, the Clancy Brothers, and the Johnny Mann Singers. Established recording artists such as Marty Robbins ("Ribbon of Darkness"),[31] Judy Collins ("Early Morning Rain"), Richie Havens and Spyder Turner ("I Can't Make It Anymore"), and the Kingston Trio ("Early Morning Rain") all achieved some chart success with Lightfoot's material.
Personal life and death[edit]
Lightfoot was married three times. His first marriage in April 1963 was to a Swedish woman, Brita Ingegerd Olaisson, with whom he had two children, Fred and Ingrid. They divorced in 1973, the marriage ending in part because of his infidelity. Lightfoot acknowledged that his musical touring and the fact that he found fidelity difficult in a long-distance relationship contributed to the failure of at least two relationships.
The song "If You Could Read My Mind" was written in reflection upon his disintegrating marriage. At the request of his daughter, Ingrid, he performed the lyrics with a slight change: the line "I'm just trying to understand the feelings that you lack" is altered to "I'm just trying to understand the feelings that we lack." He said in an interview that the difficulty with writing songs inspired by personal stories is that there is not always the emotional distance and clarity to make lyrical improvements such as the one his daughter suggested.
Lightfoot was single for 16 years and had two other children from relationships between his first and second marriages: Gaylen McGee and Eric Lightfoot.[69]
In the early 1970s, Lightfoot was involved with Cathy Smith; their volatile relationship inspired his songs "Sundown" and "Rainy Day People" among others. "Cathy was a great lady," Lightfoot told The Globe and Mail after her death. "Men were drawn to her, and she used to make me jealous. But I don't have a bad thing to say about her." Smith later became notorious as the person who injected John Belushi with a fatal speedball.[70]
In 1989, he married Elizabeth Moon. They had two children: Miles and Meredith.[71] They divorced in 2011 after a separation that Lightfoot said had lasted nine years.
Lightfoot wed for a third time on December 19, 2014, at Rosedale United Church to Kim Hasse.[72]
To stay in shape to meet the demands of touring and public performing, Lightfoot worked out in a gym six days per week, but declared in 2012 that he was "fully prepared to go whenever I'm taken." He calmly stated, "I've been almost dead a couple times, once almost for real ... I have more incentive to continue now because I feel I'm on borrowed time, in terms of age."[73]
Lightfoot's band members displayed loyalty to him, as both musicians and friends, recording and performing with him for as long as 45 years.[74][75]
Lightfoot was a long-time resident of Toronto having settled in the Rosedale neighbourhood in the 1970s, which once hosted an infamous after-party following a Maple Leaf Gardens date on Bob Dylan's Rolling Thunder Revue tour.[76] In 1999, he purchased his final home in the Bridle Path neighbourhood,[77] where he would eventually live across the street from fellow musician Drake who purchased property in the mid-2010s,[78] and at various times down the street from both Mick Jagger and Prince.[79]
Lightfoot was a lifelong fan of the Toronto Maple Leafs and was made an honorary captain of the team for the 1991–92 season.[80]
In mid-April 2023, Lightfoot's declining health caused him to cancel the remainder of his 2023 tour.[81] Lightfoot died of natural causes at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre in Toronto on May 1, 2023, at the age of 84.[82]
The Mariners' Church in Detroit (the "Maritime Sailors' Cathedral" mentioned in "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald") 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.[83] Additionally, the Split Rock Lighthouse, which overlooks Lake Superior in Minnesota, shone its light in honor of Lightfoot on May 3.[84]
In the days after his death, a series of tributes took place in his hometown of Orillia, one of them previously planned. On May 6, the local opera house hosted Leisa Way & the Wayward Wind Band, a previously planned show that paid tribute to Lightfoot that became a memorial show of sorts. It sold out after his death.[85] A day later, a public visitation was held at St. Paul's United Church that drew more than 2,400 people. [86] On May 8, 2023, a private funeral was held for Lightfoot at St. Paul's United Church.[87] His body was later cremated, and his ashes were buried next to his parents at St. Andrew's and St. James' Cemetery in Orillia.[88]
Alexander Carpenter, professor of musicology at the University of Alberta, noted the number of tributes to Lightfoot in the media that held him as "quintessentially Canadian" and questioned whether this nationalist, nostalgic view [blurred] "the reality that Lightfoot was a musician who had a much wider influence on the popular music scene of the 1970s, well beyond Canada’s borders".[89] Carpenter contended that Lightfoot both romanticized Canadian history and looked more deeply into the country's past – an aspect of his music that has been "largely lost in the effusive eulogies in the media". Lightfoot's gentle, sentimental delivery style was noted by Carpenter as evoking a nostalgia, but this was not necessarily a "compelling or accurate portrait of Canada", with the article concluding: "Simply casting Lightfoot as an exemplar of Canadian-ness overshadows Lightfoot's legacy. He was a songsmith and a musician who toiled for his entire career – spanning nearly six decades – to bring words and music together in meaningful and enduring ways."[89]