Keywords Songwriters

Success in Pop and Country Markets
In the wake of the success of his songs, Lightfoot performed in 1965 at the Newport Folk Festival, RI, and at Town Hall, New York, and in 1966 toured with Ian and Sylvia in England. Though the contemporary folk music movement, in which Lightfoot had become a significant figure, waned for a time, he made the transition easily to the larger pop and country market, becoming in Canada the most important male pop singer of the late 1960s and the 1970s.

On 31 Mar 1967 he gave a single concert at Massey Hall, the first in what was to become an annual series until 1984, continuing thereafter every 18 months until 2001. In 1969 one of his three concerts there was recorded and released as the LP Sunday Concert. In 1978 he gave an unprecedented series of nine Massey Hall concerts in as many nights - each one sold out. Subsequent seasons often comprised up to four concerts.

Lightfoot briefly embarked on an acting career, starring in the 1983 film Harry Tracy.

Tours
Lightfoot made his first cross-Canada tour in 1967 and performed annually in the US (with multi-concert series in New York and Los Angeles) and in Europe during the 1970s. He also toured twice in Australia. He temporarily suspended touring activities in early 1972 due to Bell's Palsy, a partial facial paralysis. During the 1980s he averaged 40 to 50 concerts each year, including a European tour in 1981 and appearances on a roughly biannual basis in many major US and Canadian halls - eg, at the National Arts Centre, Carnegie Hall (New York), and Symphony Hall (Boston) - and summer music festivals (Ravinia, Wolf Trap, etc). Latterly he also performed on behalf of social and environmental causes.

During the 1990s Lightfoot toured more than he recorded, giving 60 to 70 concerts per year across North America as of 1993, reduced to 50 by 1998. In 2002 he embarked on a 60-city tour, but on 8 Sept 2002 suffered a serious abdominal hemorrhage. His hospitalization and recovery were lengthy; his next (brief) appearance on stage was not until the Mariposa Folk Festival, July 2004.

Backup Musicians
Lightfoot at first was backed up by a second guitarist (David Rea), and later by both a guitarist (Laurice Milton 'Red' Shea 1966-71, then Terry Clements) and bass guitarist (John Stockfish 1966-9, then Rick Haynes); and finally (with the addition of drummer Barry Keane and steel guitarist Pee Wee Charles in 1975) a small band. Clements, Haynes, Keane, and the keyboard player Michael Heffernan accompanied Lightfoot in 2001. He himself is a competent six-string and 12-string guitarist in the folk style. The Martin Guitar Company has named a guitar for him.

Recordings by Lightfoot and Others
Several of his records have been hits in Canada: 'Spin Spin' (1965); 'Bitter Green' (1968); 'Summer Side of Life' (1971); and 'Same Old Obsession,' 'You Are What I Am,' (1972) and 'Anything for Love' (1986). Others were greater or lesser hits internationally: 'If You Could Read My Mind' (1970), covered by Liza Minnelli, Stars on 54, and Barbra Streisand among others); the million-seller 'Sundown' and 'Carefree Highway' (1974); 'Rainy Day People' (1975); 'The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald ' (1976, a ballad inspired by the sinking, in Lake Superior, of the ore carrier Edmund Fitzgerald), and 'The Circle Is Small' (1978). Lightfoot also recorded Dylan's 'Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues' and Kris Kristofferson's 'Me and Bobby McGee,' both popular in Canada. At least three of his albums have each sold more than 1 million copies in the US: Sundown, Gord's Gold, and Summertime Dream. Several of his albums have reached gold, platinum, or double platinum, status in Canada. Total album sales have been estimated at more than 10 million.

Other well-known Lightfoot songs include 'Alberta Bound,' 'Did She Mention My Name?' 'Home from the Forest' (recorded by Ronnie Hawkins), 'I'm Not Supposed to Care,' 'Last Time I Saw Her,' 'Minstrel of the Dawn,' 'Song for a Winter's Night,' 'Steel Rail Blues' (for which he received an ASCAP award in 1966), and 'The Way I Feel.' His 'Canadian Railroad Trilogy,' a favourite in concert, recounts the construction of the CPR across Canada in the 1880s. Commissioned by the CBC for a centennial show, '100 Years Young,' seen 1 Jan 1967, this three-part narrative song was performed by the composer with the Ron Collier orchestra. Lightfoot included performances of it on the LPs The Way I Feel and Sunday Concert. Recordings of other Lightfoot songs arranged for orchestra have been made by John Arpin and Neil Chotem.

Lightfoot recorded only three albums after 1990: the autobiographical Waiting for You (1993), A Painter Passing Through (1998), and Harmony (2004), his 20th solo original album. Songbook, a four-CD set (Rhino Records, 1999), was a "best-of" collection with some previously unrecorded material. A television special, Gordon Lightfoot: Live in Reno (2000), was shown in the US.

Lightfoot's songs were published by M. Witmark, New York, or by his own company, Early Morning Productions, established in Toronto in 1969. Folios were issued in conjunction with most of his albums (reissues, Gord's Gold, and Gord's Gold II excepted), and anthologies have been published by Warner Brothers.

Lightfoot's Style and Influence
Lightfoot's singing has been described as 'almost crooning - a style which understates and redeems the rhetorical and sentimental conventions intrinsic to all formal songwriting' (Stephen Holden, Rolling Stone, 14 Mar 1974). Reviewing the LP Sundown, Geoffrey Stokes (Village Voice, 14 Feb 1974) noted Lightfoot's 'extraordinary sensitivity to pain - his own and others - and joy... Vulnerable and open in a way that he denied in his earlier writing, Lightfoot's is the voice of the romantic. While early recordings displayed his robust and attractive baritone voice to advantage, through the 1990s there was a gradual fading to a somewhat nasal voice of age and experience, equally valid in a folk context.

In his Maclean's article Tom Hopkins observed: 'He has obliquely managed to fulfill the most honorable role of the folksinger, the role of chronicler. Many of the secrets he keeps are those of the nation. Such songs as 'The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald'... and 'Canadian Railroad Trilogy' grasped the smell of the land, captured its textures so that for many he has become a sort of aural Pierre Berton, a codifier, a scribe and in a land of harping factions and endless miles, a link between the tribes.'

Among the Canadians who have recorded Lightfoot's songs are the Irish Rovers, Sarah McLachlan, John McDermott, Anne Murray, the Rheostatics, and Ian Tamblyn. A tribute album, Beautiful, was released in 2003.

Recognition
Lightfoot received 15 Juno Awards 1965-78: as best folksinger of 1965, 1966, 1968, 1969, 1974, 1976, and 1977; as best male singer of 1967, 1970, 1971, 1972, and 1975; as composer of the year in 1972 and 1976; and for the folk album of the year (Old Dan's Records) in 1973. He was inducted into the Juno Hall of Fame in 1986. He has also been nominated for four (US) Grammy Awards: best rock performance ('Did She Mention My Name?') in 1968; best vocal performance, male - pop, rock, or folk ('If You Could Read My Mind) in 1971; song of the year and best vocal performance, male - pop, rock, or folk ('The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald') in 1976.

Lightfoot was appointed an Officer of the Order of Canada in 1970 and made a Companion in the Order in 2003; he became a Member of the Order of Ontario in 1988. He was cited with Anne Murray as Canada's artists of the 1970s by the Canadian Recording Industry Association in 1980, and received SOCAN's William Harold Moon Award in 1990. Further honours for Lightfoot include the Governor General's Performing Arts Award (1997), induction into the Canadian Broadcast Hall of Fame and the Canadian Country Music Hall of Fame (both in 2001), a Masterworks award from the Audio-Visual Preservation Trust; and a Toronto Arts Award for lifetime achievement (2001). He was the inaugural inductee of the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame (2003).

Discography
Lightfoot. 1964 (1966). U Artists UAS-6487

The Way I Feel. 1967. U Artists UAS-6587

Did She Mention My Name? 1967. U Artists UAS-6649

Back Here on Earth. 1968. U Artists UAS-6672

Sunday Concert. 1969. U Artists UAS-6714

Best of Gordon Lightfoot. U Artists UAS-6754

Sit Down Young Stranger. (1970). Rep RS-6392

Summer Side of Life. 1970-1. Rep MS-2037

Classic Lightfoot. (1971). U Artists UAS-5510

Don Quixote. 1971. Rep MS-2056

Old Dan's Records. 1972. Rep MS-2116

Sundown. 1973. Rep MS-2177

Cold on the Shoulder. 1974. Rep MS-2206

Summertime Dream. (1976). Rep MS-2246

Endless Wire. 1976. Warner KBS-3149

Dream Street Rose. (1980). Warner XHS-3426

Shadows. (1982). Warner XBS-3633

Salute. (1983). Warner 92-39014

East of Midnight. 1984-6. Warner 92-54821

Also, the anthologies Gord's Gold (1975, 2-Rep 2RS-2237) and Gord's Gold, Volume II (1988, Warner 92-57841), comprising re-recorded versions of Lightfoot's most popular songs

Author Revised: Betty Nygaard King

Bibliography

Batten, Jack. 'I just write songs I think Canadians will dig,' Canadian Magazine, 5 Feb 1966

Links to Other Sites
JUNO Awards
The online home for the JUNO Awards and the Canadian Music Hall of Fame. Scroll down the page to check out the latest award winners and music clips. Sample the latest JUNO Awards CD. From the Canadian Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences.

Canadian Music Hall of Fame
This site features profiles of Canadian artists inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame. Check the list of past inductees and then click on the appropriate year in the "Virtual Hall of Fame." A Canadian Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (CARAS) website.

Lightfoot!
A comprehensive tribute site about Gordon Lightfoot’s music and performing career.

Gordon Lightfoot: Songbook
Features music clips and detailed album notes from Gordon Lightfoot’s “Songbook” collection. Also provides a biography and producer’s comments. From Rhino Entertainment.

Gordon Lightfoot: Canada's Folk Laureate
This CBC website features audio and video clips of Gordon Lightfoot in performance.

S.S. Edmund Fitzgerald Online
The tragic story about the 1975 sinking of the Great Lakes freighter S.S. Edmund Fitzgerald and its crew during a terrible storm on Lake Superior. Commemorated in the song "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" by Gordon Lightfoot.

Canadian Recording Artists
Images of a series stamps that pay tribute to Canadian recording artists. From the Canada Post website.

The CanCon Atlas
An interactive map depicting some of the Canadian places celebrated in song. Click on the map icons around the country to view music videos by a cross-section of Canadian musicians. From the CBC website.