Lightfoot, Gordon 1938–

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Lightfoot, Gordon 1938–

(Gordon Meredith Lightfoot)

PERSONAL: Born November 17, 1938, in Orilla, Ontario, Canada; son of Gordon Meredith and Jessie Vick (Trill) Lightfoot; married second wife, Elizabeth Moon; children: (first marriage) Fred, Ingrid; (second marriage) Eric, Miles. Education: Attended Westlake College of Music.

ADDRESSES: Office—1365 Yonge St., No. 207, Toronto, Ontario M4T 2P7, Canada.

CAREER: Songwriter, singer, and guitarist. Has also appeared in movies, including Harry Tracy, Desperado, 1982, and Tears Are Not Enough, 1985, and in television shows, including the series The Country and Western Show, beginning 1963, the movie One Hundred Years Young, 1967, and episodes of The Midnight Special, 1974–77, Saturday Night Live, 1976, Hotel, 1988, and Life and Times, 1996.

AWARDS, HONORS: Canadian Juno Awards for top folk singer, 1965, 1966, 1968, 1969, 1973, 1974, 1975, 1976, 1977, for top male vocalist, 1967, 1970, 1971, 1972, 1974, and for composer of the year, 1972, 1976; Canadian Medal of Service, 1970; songwriting awards, American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers, 1971, 1974, 1976, 1977; named to Order of Canada, 1970, elevated to Companion, 2003; pop record of the year award, Music Operators of America, 1974, for "Sundown"; Vanier Award, Canadian Jaycees, 1977; named Canadian male recording artist of the 1970s, 1980; inducted into Juno Hall of Fame, 1986; Governor General's Performing Arts Award; honored by Martin Guitar Company with its D-18GL Gordon Lightfoot Limited Edition Signature model, 2001; inaugural member, Canadian Folk Music Walk of Fame, 2003, inducted into Canadian Railway Hall of Fame, with special award for composing "Canadian Railway Trilogy"; inducted into Canadian Songwriter Hall of Fame, 2003; inducted into Canadian Music Industry Hall of Fame, 2005; named to Order of Ontario.

WRITINGS:

AUTHOR OF LYRICS; RECORDINGS

Two Tones at the Village Corner, Canatal Records, 1962.

The Canadian Talent Library, Canadian Talent Library, 1964.

Lightfoot, United Artists, 1966.

Way I Feel, United Artists, 1967.

Did She Mention My Name, United Artists, 1968.

Back Here on Earth, United Artists, 1968.

Early Lightfoot, United Artists, 1969.

Sunday Concert, United Artists, 1969.

The Ballad of Yarmouth Castle, United Artists, 1969.

If You Could Read My Mind (originally released as Sit down Young Strangers), Reprise, 1970.

Summer Side of Life, Reprise, 1971.

Classic Lightfoot, United Artists, 1971.

The Gordon Lightfoot Story, United Artists, 1971.

Don Quixote, Reprise, 1972.

Old Dan's Records, Reprise, 1972.

Sundown, Reprise, 1973.

The Very Best of Gordon Lightfoot, United Artists, 1974.

The Very Best of Gordon Lightfoot, Volume II, United Artists, 1975.

A Lightfoot Collection: Best of Gordon Lightfoot Volume III, United Artists, 1975.

Cold on Shoulder, Reprise, 1975.

Gord's Gold, Reprise, 1975.

Early Morning Rain, Sunset, 1976.

Summertime Dream, Reprise, 1976.

Fantastic Gordon Lightfoot, two albums, K-Tel Records, 1977.

Endless Wire, Warner Bros., 1978.

The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face, Pickwick Records, 1979.

Dream Street Rose, Warner Bros., 1980.

The Best of Gordon Lightfoot, EMI-Manhattan, 1980.

The Gordon Lightfoot Collection, Warner Bros., 1981.

The Best of Gordon Lightfoot, Warner Bros., 1981.

Shadows, Warner Bros., 1982.

The Best of Anne Murray and Gordon Lightfoot (eight-album boxed set), Capitol Records/Reader's Digest, 1982.

Salute, Warner Bros., 1983.

Songbook, EMI America Records, 1985.

East of Midnight, Warner Bros., 1986.

Over 60 Minutes with … Lightfoot, Capitol Records, 1987.

Gord's Gold, Volume II, Warner Bros., 1989.

Early Morning Rain, EMI-USA, 1990.

Best of Gordon Lightfoot, Curb/WEA, 1991.

The Original Lightfoot: The United Artists Years, United Artists, 1992.

The United Artists Collection (contains four 1960s United Artists studio albums), EMI Records, 1993.

Waiting for You, Warner Bros., 1993.

Thirty-six All-Time Favorites, three CDs, Time/Life, 1993.

A Painter Passing Through, Warner Bros., 1998.

Gordon Lightfoot Songbook 1962–1998 (four-CD boxed set), Rhino, 1999.

Complete Greatest Hits, Rhino, 2002.

(Songwriter) Beautiful: A Tribute to Gorden Lightfoot, Northern-Blues Music/Borealis Recording, 2003.

Harmony, Linus Entertainment, 2004.

Many albums have been rerecorded with slight alterations; composer of numerous songs for other artists, including Peter, Paul & Mary, Judy Collins, and Johnny Cash. Poetic selections from Lightfoot's songs are collected in I Wish You Good Spaces, Blue Mountain Arts, 1977.

ADAPTATIONS: The lyrics of Lightfoot's song "The Pony Man" were adapted into a children's book of the same name, Harper's Magazine Press, 1972. Lightfoot's songs have been featured in movies, including One Hundred Years Young (television movie), 1967; Hail, Hero!, 1969; Paperback Hero (also known as Le coq du village), 1973; Lighthead, 2002; and The Brown Bunny, 2003.

SIDELIGHTS: Gordon Lightfoot has been called an unpretentious singer and songwriter, but despite his simple arrangements, his evocative ballads have made him one of the most popular and enduring folk singers of the late twentieth century, while one of Lightfoot's best-known songs is "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald," about a maritime disaster on Lake Superior in 1975, he has also sung of Canadian history and culture in many other songs. "His evocative lyrics sweep you across the land with painterly observations," Chatelaine contributor Peter Goddard commented in a review of Waiting for You, an album that is particularly rich with Canadian lore.

Lightfoot is known, too, for the hundreds of songs he has written both solo and with other artists. "I've always enjoyed writing, because I like getting on the roll of knowing it was going someplace, beginning to ending," he told Rod Harmon for the Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service. Lightfoot added, "I like exploring the various vowels, the A, E, I, O, U. You gotta use 'em all. That way, you get some variety in your rhyme schemes. Because I still believe that songs have to rhyme or they're not songs."

Lightfoot has continued to write new songs and tour, although he was forced to take several months off after he suffered an abdominal aneurysm in 2002 that left him in a coma for more than a month and which kept him confined to a hospital bed for three months. In April of 2003, he granted his first post-illness interview, announcing his plans to release another album, the vocal and guitar tracks for which had been recorded before his illness, and return to touring. During that year, his lifetime of work was acknowledged by a number of hall of fame inductions and with a tribute album recorded by a number of singers and groups, including Bruce Cockburn, Cowboy Junkies, Tragically Hip, Maria Muldaur, and Blackie and the Rodeo Kings. The album, Beautiful: A Tribute to Gorden Lightfoot, was the joint project of two independent Canadian labels, Northern-Blues Music of Ottawa and Borealis Recording of Toronto. Colin Linden contributed to the project as guitarist and producer. Larry LeBlanc noted in Billboard that, "despite Lightfoot's repertoire of more than 100 songs spread across some 19 albums, Linden says it was often difficult to match artists to song. 'Gordon casts such a big shadow,' he explains. 'It's hard for another singer/songwriter to do something that wouldn't pale in comparison.'" Lightfoot favors the Martin guitar, and in 2001, the company honored him with a limited edition D-18GL, only sixty of which were manufactured.

Early in 2004, the post-production work on Harmony was completed, and Lightfoot also shot a music video for his new single, "Inspiration Lady." Before the release of Harmony, a number of the tracks were made available through iTunes. In May, the album was released, Lightfoot's twentieth of original material. Mike Regenstreif wrote in Sing Out! that "Lightfoot's voice sounds frailer than it did years ago. But it still communicates both the implicit and explicit emotional content of his songs. Harmony marks a welcome return, and return to form by a musical legend." Lightfoot's first performance since his illness was in his hometown of Orilla, and he returned to the concert stage in November of 2004 in Hamilton, Ontario.

Lightfoot continued playing for his fans in 2005, and in April he began his first concert tour since 2002. Randy Lewis reported on a stop in Cerritos, California in the Los Angeles Times, noting that although Lightfoot is only a few years older than fellow Canadians Joni Mitchell and Neil Young, whose careers also began in the 1960s and fully developed in the 1970s, he "always seemed more the elder statesman. That's less because of his age than an artistic sensibility that mines the permanence of the land beneath him and the history behind him." Lewis said of Harmony that "it is musically and lyrically in keeping with his [Lightfoot's] '60s and '70s work."