[Doug]

I vividly remember the first time I heard WOTEF. This was before the release of Summertime Dream. He was on tour in San Diego at Golden Hall. He was playing some of the songs which would be released on Summertime Dream.

At the time I had been a fan for only a few years, and been trying to get older LPs. I wanted everything he'd done. I was especially blown away when I heard CRT a few years earlier in concert. His shows had been almost exclusively acoustic.

As I remember he gave a little intro recounting reading about the disaster in Newsweek. With the first notes of The Wreck, my eyes got big and a smile broke my lips. This was gonna be different ..... no regular love ballad this. This was gonna be an epic story along the lines of CRT. I can still remember my mouth hanging open when the song ended ..... turning to my new bride and saying "That's gonna be a huge hit!".

The next day I was with some other folks who knew I was a Lightfoot fan. Now remember this is 1976 he received regular airplay and was fairly well known. I told them I'd heard Lightfoots next hit last night, and they'd be hearing soon.

Being in Southern California we weren't familiar with the Great Lakes shipping enterprises... We didn't know what an Edmund Fitzgerald was, but for the only time in my life I was right about how popular this Lightfoot song would be!