Gordon Lightfoot Forums - Canada's top export: music

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Entertainment
Canada's top export: music

By Tony Sauro
October 14, 2008
Record Staff Writer
Gordon Lightfoot didn’t hesitate.

Does the Canadian folk singer-songwriter have a favorite among the large catalog of tunes he’s written and recorded since 1966?

“Sure,” Lightfoot said during a telephone interview from his Toronto home. “ ‘The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.’ We love doing that one. It’s a wonderful song to play.”

The panoramic and vividly detailed song, based on a Newsweek article about the actual Nov. 10, 1975, sinking of an iron-ore ship on Lake Superior, made it to No. 6 on the American pop charts in September of 1976. It appears on Lightfoot’s “Summertime Dream” album (1976).

How about a favorite album?

“‘East of Midnight’,” he said. “That’s the one everybody thinks David Foster produced. He didn’t. He and I worked on one track.”

Oddly, this 1986 album largely was dismissed by critics and didn’t fare too well commercially in the U.S. Foster is a Canadian-born producer known for his lush, lavish, synthesizer-heavy productions. He produced the album’s “Anything for Love.” Lightfoot self-produced the rest of it in Toronto.

Here’s one person’s list of favorite Lightfoot songs and albums (mostly for sentimental, not necessarily stylistic, reasons):

Songs

• “Early Morning Rain” (1966): Popularized by Peter, Paul & Mary, it never became a hit but contains one of Lighfoot’s most memorable lines: “You can’t jump a jet plane/Like you can a freight train.”

• “If You Could Read My Mind” (1970): A poignant, perceptive portrait of a relationship in doubt.

• Canadian Railroad Trilogy”: A majestic 6:30 epic from 1967’s “The Way I Feel” album that chronicles the building of the Trans-Canada Railway.

• “Carefree Highway” (1973): A song of hung-over hope (“Let me slip away on you”) named for the road to Carefree, Ariz.

• “Affair on 8th Avenue” (1968): A beautiful song of romantic longing (“The perfume that she wore/Came from some little store/On the down side of town”).

• “If I Could” (1968): A lovely song and sentiment about the humbling nature of the creative process (“If I could tame all the fleeting perceptions I hold”).

• “The Circle Is Small” (1978): A pretty — and intensely emotional — song about the ugliness of infidelity.

• “Alberta Bound” (1972): This high-spirited road song from his “Don Quixote” album features a mandolin solo by Ry Cooder.

• “Rainy Day People” (1975): A gently flowing reflection on needing support in tough emotional times (“Rainy day people always seem to know when you’re feeling blue/High-stepping strutters/Who land in the gutters/Sometimes need one, too”).

Albums

• “Summer Side of Life” (1971): “Ten Degrees and Getting Colder” and “Miguel” are classics. There’s also some experimentation (“Cabaret,” “Nous Vivons Ensemble”).

• “Cold on the Shoulder” (1975): This includes “Rainy Day People,” the charming “Rainbow Trout” and stately “The Soul Is the Rock.”

• “Sundown” (1974): Lightfoot’s biggest commercial breakthrough, it includes the top-10 hits “Sundown” and “Carefree Highway” as well as the panoramic “Seven Island Suite” and “Circle of Steel,” with its pointed social commentary.

• “Summertime Dream” (1976): It includes “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald,” the sublime “Spanish Moss” and intense “Race Among the Ruins.”

• “Back Here on Earth” (1968): Lightfoot’s fourth studio album for United Artists, it’s the apex of that period, including “Affair on 8th Avenue,” “If I Could” and “The Circle Is Small.”

• “Endless Wire” (1978): The reflective title has a bluesy groove while “Daylight Katy” is a sheer delight, ”The Circle Is Small” gets reprised and “If Children Had Wings” is a sad-but-hopeful breakup song (“And it shines on and on ‘til all sadness is gone/And if children had wings I would sing them this song/With a smile on my face and a tear in my eye/Everything will be fine by and by”).

On Canada
There are any number of things many Americans don’t know about Canada, the United States’ northern neighbor and No. 1 trading partner.

Among them:

• The U.S. imports more energy supplies — oil, natural gas, etc. — from Canada than any other country, including those in the Middle East.

• The Canadians are holding a federal election today, Oct. 14. The difference, though, is that in a parliamentary system, the entire election lasted just six weeks and candidates were limited to spending $20 million each on it.

(Canadian folksinger Gordon Lightfoot’s take on the U.S. presidential election? “It’s the best entertainment on television and it has been so for the last year-and-a-half. I’ve followed every moment of it. It’s going to be very close.”)

• How many successful Canadian bands and musicians have emerged since the rock ’n’ era began in the 1950s.

Lightfoot, one of the more prominent ones, plays his first show ever in Stockton Wednesday night at the Bob Hope Theatre.

Here’s a list of some of his predecessors, peers and successors who’ve emerged in the last 50 years:

Bryan Adams
Paul Anka
Arcade Fire
Jann Arden
Bachman-Turner Overdrive
The Band (Robbie Robertson, Garth Hudson, Rick Danko, Richard Manuel. Note: Levon Helm is from Marvel, Ark.)
Barenaked Ladies
Blue Rodeo
Broken Social Scene
Michael Buble
Tom Cochrane
Bruce Cockburn
Leonard Cohen
Cowboy Junkies
Crash Test Dummies
The Crew Cuts
Burton Cummings
The Dears
The Diamonds
Celine Dion
Denny Doherty (the Mamas and the Papas)
Kathleen Edwards
Leslie Feist
Ferron
Five-Man Electrical Band
David Foster (producer)
The Four Lads
Nelly Furtado
Nick Gilder
The Guess Who
Sarah Harmer
Corey Hart
Hayden
Jeff Healey
Hot Hot Heat
Ian & Sylvia
John Kay (Steppenwolf)
Diana Krall
k.d. lang
Andy Kim
Daniel Lanois (producer)
Avril Lavigne
Loverboy
Dewey Martin (Buffalo Springfield)
Kate & Anna McGarrigle
Loreena McKennitt
Sarah McLachlan
Murray McLauchlan
Joni Mitchell
Alanis Morissette
Anne Murray
Alannah Myles
The New Pornographers
Our Lady Peace
Leon Redbone
Rush
Jack Scott
Ron Sexsmith
Jane Siberry
Skinny Puppy
Sloan
Hank Snow
The Stampeders
The Stills
Sum 41
Tegan & Sara
David Clayton Thomas (Blood, Sweat and Tears)
Tokyo Police Club
The Tragically Hip
Triumph
Trooper
Shania Twain
Valdy
Gino Vannelli
Zal Yanofsky (Lovin’ Spoonful)
Neil Young