Gordon Lightfoot Forums - Des Moines article

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A&E: Gordon Lightfoot still 'making a living'

The member of the Songwriters Hall of Fame performs at Hoyt Sherman Place on Wednesday.

Gordon Lightfoot didn’t set out to play the guitar. He grew up singing in Canada and moved to California to study jazz composition and orchestration.

But as his famed musical career began in the early 1960s, a folk rock resurgence prompted him to pick up the stringed instrument.

“It was a time when playing guitar was necessary to sing the songs, so I learned to play the guitar,” Lightfoot, who performs Wednesday at Hoyt Sherman Place, said during a phone interview. “It was really a matter of what were you going to do to get by, to make a living. At the time I had a wife and a baby and another on the way. I wondered if there was a future in it.”

But there was quite a future ahead of Lightfoot.

The 74-year-old is known for hits like “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald,” “Rainy Day People” and “Carefree Highway.” Lightfoot picked up popularity in his native Canada before climbing U.S. music charts, but said the success south of the border has always meant a great deal to him. Just last year Lightfoot was inducted into the U.S. Songwriters Hall of Fame.

“Any success I can achieve down there is very gratifying. What keeps me moving is the number of fans I have,” the singer said.

Lightfoot’s songs have been covered by other musicians countless times over the years, by some of the biggest names in music. His favorite version came relatively early in his career; George Hamilton IV’s take on “Early Morning Rain” in 1966.

“It had super-clean vocals and was just a really clean performance,” Lightfoot said. “The intonation was right on the button, the energy was great and everything. I loved Elvis’s too, and Peter, Paul & Mary, The Kingston Trio, Judy Garland, but George’s got the energy.”

It’s been almost 10 years since Lightfoot released his last studio album, “Harmony.” He recorded the album in 2001, right around the time he nearly died from a ruptured artery. It was produced just in case he died from the condition, and once it seemed Lightfoot might stick around a while longer he decided to release it in 2004.

“That was to be put out after the fact, in case things didn’t go the way I wanted,” Lightfoot said. “So to find I’m still walking around 10 years later is kind of a shock.

“We still love to work, and I still feel lucky to be a part of it all.”