Gord's recorded many songs by other artists
 

Based on the ones he has included in his standard released albums, in your valued opinion, which are the 3 best?

Re: Gord's recorded many songs by other artists
 

Impossible to answer. I can't narrow it down to fewer than four: Pride of Man (Camp), Changes (Ochs), Me and Bobby McGee (Kristofferson) and The Auctioneer (Black, Van Dyke). This is too hard. If I had to choose one, it would probably be Me and Bobby McGee, but the songs are so different, and so great, that it's really hard to choose.

Re: Gord's recorded many songs by other artists
 

Had Gord actually made a studio recording in 1972 an extremely strong contender would have to be "Farewell To Nova Scotia"

Re: Gord's recorded many songs by other artists
 

Well the first two were easy for me. I love ligthfoots bobby mcgee and Susan's floor.

Hard to pick #3... it was between Ring Them Bells and Changes... Bells won because of Dylan over Phil and Bells was more recent ...and Changes seemed to oold when I hummed the tune in my head...too sixties sweat.

Re: Gord's recorded many songs by other artists
 

i love the variety of opinions and when folks drop a post in addition to voting

as i recall Changes is what hooked me on Lightfoot so I may be biased...years later i tried to learn to pick and realized it wasn't easy to make quick and smooth chord changes, lol...anyhow, i remember it bummed out when i realized he didn't pen it

sixties, sweet...lol, i like that term...i love some tunes that are very seventies sweet (ie. seventies awful:) )

JohnF...yeah, Gord would close a set with Farewell to Nova Scotia, and played it as recently as the mid 90's...i had to draw the line cos polls are limited to 10 items and if i included that one then i would have added ones i like even more such as his take on Turn Turn Turn, Get Together (Come on People), etc...my least fave Gord cover is probably Negotiations

Re: Gord's recorded many songs by other artists
 

I guess I'm in the majority with Susan's Floor and Me and Bobby McGee. For me # 3 would be close between Auctioneer and Country Singer with The Auctioneer barely winning out.

Kevin

Re: Gord's recorded many songs by other artists
 

I too was torn between Changes and Ring Them Bells. I ended up choosing Ring Them Bells because it fits his voice now. Changes is a great tune. I used to be....is great with Gord's voice also and seems to fit his life. This was a toughie JJ.

Deb

Re: Gord's recorded many songs by other artists
 

I found this relatively easy. "Changes", "Me and Bobby Magee", and "On Susan's Floor". Why ? Because those are the three I like the best. Why ? It's simply an aural thing. They're a pleasure to listen to.

Re: Gord's recorded many songs by other artists
 

I voted the same as RM. They're far and away the best three...IMO.

Good poll idea, jj.

Re: Gord's recorded many songs by other artists
 

My top 3 on this were :

Me and Bobby McGee
Changes
The Auctioneer

With "The First Tiime...." coming in 4th. ;)

Re: Gord's recorded many songs by other artists
 

I love this topic.
My three are On Susan's Floor, The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face (had to include this one because I love it and it puts me into instant day-dreaming mode), and Changes.
After one of the Glenside shows, FL and I waited in line and met Gord. I asked him about Phil Ochs and if he planned on including Changes on his set list. He lit up. He told me how sad it was about Phil and that they were very good friends who used to hang out in NYC (Greenwich Village) a lot with an actor friend (forget his name). He said he remembers Phil teaching him the chords to Changes on the back steps of a Toronto coffee house.
Priceless stuff!! To my knowledge, however, he hasn't done Changes in concert since then.
Oh, and I'll probably regret not including Me and Bobby McGee.
-jbt

Re: Gord's recorded many songs by other artists
 

Well, at least I Used to be a Country Singer is getting some votes. I love that and he gets bonus point for finding a song that no one would have picked up otherwise.

No such thing as a bad choice in there.

I think the fact that I'd heard a couple of versions of Me and Bobby McGee before Gord cut it may slant my thinking. it's good but might not make my top list. The first time I heard it was by Roger Miller.

Changes is up there but (he says ducking) no one did it better than Phil Ochs.

Re: Gord's recorded many songs by other artists
 

i agree with everything you say, fezo...it was great for him to take a song from local and record it...i loved seeing Gord play Country Singer live and then acknowledge McKewn in the crowd...it sounded really good live also

i heard Gord's cut of Bobby McGee on radio today and thought it sounded wonderful but then thought of some of my latter choices in the poll ranking and thought how Gord's vocal performances were so much more compelling in those (for instance, Pride of Man...it's like black and white)...i guess some folks responded to the poll as to which "song" do they like best...that works too, i make the polls non-anonymous and i hope all are fine with that

i didn't realize Gord omitted a verse from Och's Changes...one of the darker ones, perhaps...

"The world's spinning madly, it drifts in the dark
Swings through a hollow of haze
A race around the stars, a journey through
The universe ablaze with changes"

anyhow, it's #1 on my list by a few lengths (even though the vocal is not necessarily challenging, in other words, i may have just contradicted myself:) )

Re: Gord's recorded many songs by other artists
 

first off, if this were some sort of Match Game we'd win a prize

what a neat anecdote you've posted...Ochs wrote Changes while in Toronto...i didn't know if you'd read this before:

THE BALLAD OF GORDON LIGHTFOOT by Phil Ochs


There I was in Canada, stoned out of my mind at 5:00 in the morning,
swapping songs, jokes and bottles with Ronnie Hawkins, the Arkansas
rock 'n' roll singer who runs an out of sight bar in Toronto and Gordon
Lightfoot, who is the Canadian Hank Williams.

The best music is usually done in situations like that, where there's no
stage, no mike or lights, and no unnatural need to please a strange
audience. You're just singing to have a good time, communicate with people
who understand you, and create those mad moments that become cherished
memories when you're too old to do it anymore.

Also when you get rolling like that you can find out who has it and who
doesn't because you drunk away all your hang-ups. And as I listened to
Lightfoot sing away that intoxicated morning, I knew he had it.

Every time I see Lightfoot he ends up apoligizing to me because he's not
writing "important" protest songs. "I'm just starting to get beneath the
surface, and I know my stuff is just too trite," he told me on Wednesday
night in a coffeehouse packed with people there to hear him and a long line
waiting outside for the next show. He says, "Damn, your Mississippi song
sure knocks me out," the week that Marty Robbins has made his "Ribbon Of
Darkness" number one on the Country & Western charts. Then this paradoxial
man picks up his two guitars and walks guiltily to the stage and wipes out
another audience which could never fully realize that his stage humility was
not put on at all.

Lightfoot, aside from having the greatest last real name of anybody in folk
music, is destined to become a pivitol figure in bridging the gap between
folk music and country & western. He can sing, play, entertain, write, put
himself down with a flair that marks an original. He's the kind of guy who
can work a bar and cut through the booze with honesty; there's a strange
poetry that lives within the country bar crowd that demands to hear the
simple truth served on a platter of realism. Ingrained in the natural
Lightfoot is the same spark of human insight that carried Hank Williams,
Jimmy Rodgers and Johhny Cash out of show business and into immortality.

Now everybody has his faults, and Lightfoot is no exception. He plays golf.
But that can be rationalized if you consider that he really is an outdoor
type, hunting and fishing, skiing, and who knows but somewhere in his past
innocent years he might even have swum naked in some chilly Canadian lake.
Think about that the first time you see him.

Those of us who know Lightfoot now are of course concerned that he won't
fall into the well-traveled pitfall known in some circles as the success
syndrome, of ignoring his responsibility to us, and writing just for himself
and a few cronies, you might say. Lightfoot (notice how many times I take
advantage of that groovy sounding name) was born and copywritten on Nov. 17,
1938, in Orillia, Ontario, and rumor has it he killed himself a b'ar when
he was only three (see how easy it is to start a legend, folks). He got a
professional musical degree from Westlake College in Los Angeles, and sold
out for the first time when he became a studio singer for the CBC doing over
250 shows, mostly in choral work. Not content with selling out in one
country, he went to England and did his own hour-long country show in a
summer replacement and reached over four million people. At the end of the
summer, not having been knighted, he left in a huff to ramble in Sweden
where he married his Swedish wife, Brita (all young record buying type girls
please forget you read that). Living overseas put him through several
changes and cleared up his mind to the point of definately deciding to be a
writer and so he returned to his native Canada.

His friend Ian Tyson of Ian & Sylvia became more and more impressed with
his songs and finally asked one of his managers, John Court, to fly up to
Toronto and watch him perform. Court sat in the shadows, puffing on his
Tiparillos, and as he became convinced, the chemistry of a large management
office took effect: Peter, Paul & Mary's next release was Gordon Lightfoot's
"For Loving Me".

The first time you see Lightfoot, if he's not singing you might walk right
by him, mistaking him for a statue. He's got classic Greek features with an
Argosy magazine jawline, and long flowing blond locks of hair always neatly
combed. So you see, he doesn't have to write songs, he could become a
sculptor's model.

Lightfoot has established himself as a recording artist in his own rite,
having had a couple of records at the top of the charts in Canada. He's also
one of the top drawing cards there, and now he has to happen in the States.
He'll be at the Newport Folk Festival in July, and will make his club debut
at Mother Blue's in Chicago. I forgot to mention before, he records for
Warner Bros., publishes with Witmark, and frankly his 16 month old son
doesn't really dig his songs.

Gordon Lightfoot may become the greatest country & western writer of all
time. But, on the other hand, he may become a forest ranger.

Re: Gord's recorded many songs by other artists
 

Thanks for posting the article, jj. I have read it before but it has been awhile. I enjoyed it as much this time around- Phil definitely had a great sense of humor, and was obviously a great judge of talent.
-jbt

Re: Gord's recorded many songs by other artists
 

and what do ya know - he did become a sculptor's model :)

Re: Gord's recorded many songs by other artists
 

lol, yeah, and i own everyone of of country & western songs:)

there's a question: which song of Gord's is most C&W genre?

i suppose Remember Me and It's Too Late (the Cramer piano alone) qualify but Dreamland always comes to mind...can we get a list going?

Re: Gord's recorded many songs by other artists
 

I've always thought he had the face of a model..very classic bone structure and great lips. A very handsome fellow!
;)

Re: Gord's recorded many songs by other artists
 

What about "Gossip Calypso" great song sung well by Gord.

Gordon not on Youtube singing this song, but here it is by Trevor Peacock, who wrote "Mrs Brown You've Got a Lovely Daughter" A #1 in America in 1965

Re: Gord's recorded many songs by other artists
 

how often do we get to vote??
(I'm from Chicago, you know! where the city motto is vote early and vote often!)

Re: Gord's recorded many songs by other artists
 

i forgot this poll expired...interesting results and an almost comeback by Phil...ok, so it's Shel, Kris and Bob...thx to the 24 for playing...everyone cared