Gordon Lightfoot

[Digital_Man]

I saw him perform last night on Jimmy Fallon and thought he was very good. I know some of his tunes but he's one of those guys where you know the song but don't necessarily know the artist. I like good folk stuff and was listening to some of his stuff on youtube. He's about 74 years old too so I have to hand it to him.

[mozo-pg]

A true Canadian Icon. I was just reading about his career on Wiki tonight, by chance.

[ForeverAutumn]

I've been a huge fan since I was a kid, but only saw him for the first time last November. It's really "shame on me" since I live in his hometown and he does a four or five night run here every year. We happened to see him on his 74th birthday. 2000 fans (sold out venue) sang Happy Birthday to him. It was very moving, I thought.

[progeezer]

Has always been my absolute favorite male folk singer/songwriter. At one time I had just about every (vinyl) album of his.

I saw him last night on Fallon too, and over the years I've seen him in person 4 times and actually bought him a whiskey once in the 70s!

[ForeverAutumn]

Has always been my absolute favorite male folk singer/songwriter. At one time I had just about every (vinyl) album of his.

I saw him last night on Fallon too, and over the years I've seen him in person 4 times and actually bought him a whiskey once in the 70s!

Here's a true story. My brother used to have an office downtown and often went to the office tower food court for lunch. Lightfoot works out in a gym in the same building. One day Bro and his business partner are having lunch and Bro says "hey, I think that's Gordon Lightfoot". He was lunching a few tables away, just out of the gym and looking more like a homeless guy than like Gordon Lightfoot. The business partner went over to ask if he was GL. He admitted to it. They invited him to join them for lunch and he did! Every time they saw him in the food court after that, they invited him to join them and he always did. Nobody else ever seemed to recognize him.

True story. I swear.

[progeezer]

Very cool, Esther!

[ForeverAutumn]

It would have been cooler if it had ever happened on a day when I joined them for lunch! I worked in the same building for a brief period.

Still...it is pretty cool. He's obviously a very approachable guy. And buying him a whiskey is no slouch story either. Also very cool.

[Digital_Man]

Anything I should consider picking up besides a compilation cd?

[progeezer]

Anything I should consider picking up besides a compilation cd?

If you get the 2 cd comp that has BOTH "Canadian Railroad Trilogy" and "Edmund Fitzgerald" (there is one without "Fitz"), that should be enough. It has several other gems both known ("Early Morning Rain") and not so well known ("Don Quixote").

[Digital_Man]

Thanks Geez, I'll look for it.

[soundsweird]

I have over a dozen of his albums. As with most of the 70's singer-songwriters, a compilation just won't work for me, because I tend to like a lot of album tracks just as much if not more than the hits. I missed him on Jimmy Fallon, and I can't get the video to play right now.

[Adrian]

Get "Songbook" if you can find it -- a 4-CD set from Rhino that covers everything from his earliest recordings to his last studio album. All the hits and well-known songs are included, and then some.

I'm a huge Lightfoot fan. I've seen him in concert twice, the last time about six or seven years ago. His voice isn't nearly what it used to be, but he still puts on a great show. The last show I went to, people put slips of paper on the stage during intermission, obviously making requests for the second set. When Gordon came back out, he looked down at the pile of paper with a smile, bent down, and best I could tell, read every one of them. Some made him shake his head, some made him smile, and he finally got up and said something like "I think we can try a few of these." Good stuff.

Some of my favorites are:

Beautiful
Steel Rail Blues
Carefree Highway
Bitter Green
The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald
If You Could Read My Mind
Sundown
Early Morning Rain
Canadian Railroad Trilogy
Rainy Day People
I'm Not Supposed to Care
Don Quixote
Never Too Close
Song for A Winter's Night
Summertime Dream
A Painter Passing Through

[Adrian]

Funny moment during the halftime performance at last year's Grey Cup. It was the 100th game, so there were a lot of big festivities around the game. Gordon gets onstage at halftime and gets a great round of cheers as he plays an abridged version of "Canadian Railroad Trilogy." He's followed by fellow Canadian Justin Bieber, who gets roundly booed. TSN tried to downplay the crowd reaction the best they could, but it was obvious the crowd's reaction to the two different artists was night and day.

[Yodelgoat]

I haven't seen the 4 disc set, But I own a lot of his original material. The two disc set is really a nice listen, but just doesn't go deep enough. One of his more obscure tracks "sit down young stranger" is one of my favorites. Wonderful musician, really unique voice. Always makes me laugh when I see the Seinfeld where Elaine says she "loves Edmund Fitzgerald's voice"...somewhat akin to people who think Jethro Tull is a great Flute player.

[trurl]

Nice to see some love for Gordon! I always liked his 70's stuff a lot, especially Edmund Fitzgerald. He has one of the best male voices of all time imho.

[ForeverAutumn]

"Canadian Railroad Trilogy" is prog and don't let anyone tell you differently.

And whoever decided that putting Justin Beiber in front of 50,000 drunk Canadian football fans was a good idea should have been promptly fired.

[progeezer]

"Canadian Railroad Trilogy" is prog and don't let anyone tell you differently.

Agreed! An analogy could be made between "CR Trilogy" and, of all things, "Aqualung" (the song). Both have three separate & distinct songs/melodies within a song, and both return to the first song/melody at the end ("There was a time etc" and "Sitting on a park bench").

[Staun]

Was watching Harry Tracy and wondering if he did any movie sountracks. Great voice.

[Scott Bails]

Always loved "Early Morning Rain" and "Sundown."

I think I might need to check out that compilation.

[Adrian]

One of his more obscure tracks "sit down young stranger" is one of my favorites.

Another great song for sure!

[Birdy]

One of my favourite folkies, I've seen him about half a dozen times and had a nice conversation with him in a mall north of Toronto once. For someone that wants a compilation, I highly recommend the 3-CD set called The Original Lightfoot which has his first 5 albums on 3 CD's. This is without the syrupy strings that he later
re-recorded for the Gord's Gold collection. Whatever you do, don't get Gord's Gold Vol.2 as it also is largely re-records including a much inferior version of Edmund Fitzgerald. Once you have the Original Lightfoot set, I would recommend some of his albums right after that such as Sit Down Young Stranger, Don Quixote, Sundown, Cold On The Shoulder and of course Summertime Dream(original version of The Wreck Of The Edmund Fitzgerald). The 4-CD box is a great set too if you can find one.

[Jerjo]

Ah, "Summertime Dream". This song is always the soundtrack for anytime my wife and I have lunch outside.

[JAMOOL]

I don't think a comp will do this guy justice. Every album up to Summertime Dream at least is incredible. Really had a long run of sustained greatness and another long run of...uhh...sporadic greatness

This is an excellent collection here:
http://www.amazon.com/United-Artists...sts+collection

Two discs that include his first four albums (despite what the tracklisting says here I dont think any of it is live), works out to about three bucks a pop. The hits from this period aren't quite as recognizable but every one of those albums is a treasure. "Canadian Railroad Trilogy" is probably the high point - maybe Gord's greatest song ever - but lots of real good stuff. Also folkier and more acoustic than his more famous material which is kind of a plus.

Anyway, to ramble on some more, I have a real soft spot for "The Watchman's Out", one of many songs about getting drunk and wandering around. It's worth nothing that his career didn't really start until he was almost 30, so he had a lot of years as a travelling, down-on-his-luck musician; hence why he sounds so weathered from the very start.

[progeezer]

If I were going to buy 1 other album with a comp, it would Be Don Quixote.

[Lopez]

I'm working on a meteorology book at work. The authors spend almost a whole chapter on the storm that wrecked the Edmund Fitzgerald. They use the Gordon Lightfoot song lyrics (and we're paying a bundle to reprint them) to mark various stages of the storm. The authors are quite impressed at the research Gordon must have done to construct the song. He had the science of the storm perfectly.