Meeting Gordon Lightfoot, part 1

Singer-songwriter Gordon Lightfoot died on May 1. He was 84 years old, having been born on Nov. 17, 1938, in Orillia, Ontario, 90 miles from Toronto – Canada’s largest city.

Lightfoot loved to sing as a small child. As a young adult in the early 1960s, he became a folk singer, performing songs he had written in the small clubs and coffee houses that were so popular in that era.

Serious about his music and wishing – like every other singer-songwriter – to make a name for himself (while becoming rich and famous), he spent several months in Los Angeles studying the art of music composition.

By 1965, Lightfoot had written a few songs that were recorded by established musicians. Marty Robbins had a No. 1 country hit with “Ribbon of Darkness” while Waylon Jennings, George Hamilton IV, and others put Lightfoot compositions on the U.S. country charts.

Meanwhile, folk music icons Peter, Paul, and Mary landed two Lightfoot songs – “For Lovin’ Me” and “Early Morning Rain” – on the Billboard Magazine rock music charts.

Then, in 1970, Lightfoot had his first big hit as a singer when the cerebral introspective ballad “If You Could Read My Mind” peaked at No. 5 on the rock charts.

A few other Lightfoot songs had become minor hits in Canada, but to achieve enduring success he knew he had to spend considerable time in the United States, a country with ten times as many people as its northern neighbor.

Like most successful musicians, Lightfoot enjoyed touring and performing before adoring audiences; but the downside of his success was that he was often homesick. Consequently, that feeling regularly found its way into his songs.

In “Early Morning Rain,” for example, a man is lonely, drunk and several hundred miles from his family. He longs to see his relatives but he is broke and cannot figure out how to get home.

We will look at some other aspects of the life and career of this Canadian idol who was popular worldwide next week in part 2 of this article.