http://www.570news.com/news/local/ar...lightfoot-song
A Kitchener musician reflects on iconic Lightfoot song
570 News Mar 31, 2010 03:59:52 AM
2 Comment(s) 0 Recommendation(s) As Gordon Lightfoot performs new lyrics to one of his best-known songs, a Kitchener musician remembers recording the iconic tune more than 30 years ago. Ed Ringwald, known on the album as "Pee Wee Charles," says Lightfoot wrote "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" in one night after reading an article in Newsweek. The band would record the song a day later with the second take making the album. Ironically, Ringwald says the six minute tune was never supposed to be a single -- it was just supposed to be album filler. It would go on to sell two million copies and become Lightfoot's most successful single, reaching #2 on the Billboard pop chart in November, 1976.
Thanks to a new documentary, Lightfoot is now singing different lyrics for the classic song when he performs it live. According to the father-son team that appears in "Dive Detectives," human error was not the cause of the Edmund Fitzgerald's demise. Instead, the divers blame a rogue wave -- possibly 50 feet high -- for sinking the freighter. Such waves had been reported on Lake Superior earlier on the same day the Fitzgerald went down. Lightfoot has said he always took a bit of "poetic license" with the song in the verse when he referenced that a "main hatchway gave in" before the ship sank. In light of the new information, he has changed that wording in live shows, something he says pleases the family who "always cringed" at the original lyrics. The variation on the lyrics only appears when Lightfoot performs the song and, at this point, he has no intention of re-recording the original.
Ringwald remembers finishing the recording of the song in a late-night session back in 1975. He tells 570 News the haunting melody gave the song a distinct sound but adds, at the time, it didn't really stand out as being head and shoulders above any of other Lightfoot's tunes because he was such a gifted songwriter. And Ringwald says that distinct sound was almost an accident as it was accomplished by playing through a small Fender amp of his that had a hole in it, which gave the song the sound that is so well-known to this day. Ringwald concludes by pointing out that changing the lyrics will mean a lot to Gord because the story meant so much to him when he first wrote the song.
one comment at link:
The Wreck Of The Edmund Fitzgerald and its nick name as quoted by Red Shea!
I am a former student of Red Shea and took lessons from him for many years in Aurora, Ontario. Red said he and Gordon's nick name for the song is "The Wreck of the Eddy Fitzy" or the "Eddy Fitzy Song" Just thought I would share that little titbit of information with you. Sincerely, Michael A. Rumig
Recording the Fitz-Pee Wee remembers
