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Gordon Lightfoot, at 71, still owns the stage
Published by Peter Cooperon March 4, 2010in Features. 0 Comments
When people talk about classic country songwriters, they often speak of Harlan Howard, Cindy Walker, Jerry Chesnutt and Dallas Frazier.
But Gordon Lightfoot — best known in America for FM radio hits such as “Sundown” and “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald,” and best known in his native Canada as the nation’s “folk laureate” — has numerous, three-minute claims to classic-country-songwriter status.
Lightfoot — who plays Saturday, March 6 at the Ryman Auditorium — penned songs recorded by Country Music Hall of Famers Marty Robbins, Johnny Cash and Flatt & Scruggs, and his compositions “Early Morning Rain,” “Ribbon of Darkness,” “For Loving Me” and “Ten Degrees and Getting Colder” have weathered decades and become country standards.
“The first time someone from Nashville cut a song of mine was Marty Robbins, with ‘Ribbon of Darkness,’” said Lightfoot, 71. “He sped it up and did a wonderful job, and I still use his arrangement to this day. After Marty, I got to meet quite a few Nashville guys, and I made a couple of albums down there. George Hamilton IV had one of the best cuts, on ‘Early Morning Rain.’ I came down and did Johnny Cash’s television show, and got to meet Kris Kristofferson and Mickey Newbury and Waylon Jennings and a lot of others.”
Lightfoot was a driven, voracious writer who put out 13 albums in his career’s first 10 years, between 1966 and 1976. In the new century, he has been slowed by a near-fatal abdominal hemorrhage, though not by the recent Internet rumors of his death. Greatly exaggerated, those.
“Writer’s block wasn’t ever an issue for me,” Lightfoot said. “There was always the contract, so you couldn’t have writer’s block. And I found alcohol helped a lot in those early days, until 1980 when I had to stop. If I hadn’t stopped then, it would have killed me. After that, things were a lot more spread out.”
Country and bluegrass
The fruits of Lightfoot’s frenetic creativity were quite favored in country and bluegrass circles.
Robbins, Connie Smith and Conway Twitty cut “Ribbon of Darkness.” “Early Morning Rain” was recorded by Hamilton (who’s been a major supporter of Lightfoot — probably the Canadian’s biggest Nashville booster), Jerry Lee Lewis, Jerry Reed, Tim O’Brien, Vernon Oxford and others. Nanci Griffith included “Ten Degrees and Getting Colder” on her Grammy–winning Other Voices, Other Rooms album. And both Tony Rice and Mac Wiseman have released entire albums filled with nothing but Lightfoot songs. Lightfoot’s only country chart hit as a solo artist came in 1974, with “Sundown.”
“It all blended together for me,” Lightfoot said. “Whether it was the country or the pop chart, I never much worried about it. I was always too busy coming up with the next album, and coming up with songs. Things change a lot, and these days I don’t expect any enormous developments or huge hits by any other artists. My main thing now is doing great shows. When I’m up there, I own the stage.”
Lightfoot’s “own the stage” comment wasn’t uttered in arrogance. He meant “own the stage” in the way that some people talk about “owning” their problems. He meant that after 45 years on major stages, the shows are still important to him.
History through song
Also important to Lightfoot is his role as a chronicler of history, through song. His “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” was a Top 5 single in 1976, and it may stand as the last gasp for popular folk songs that told of specific current events. The song was written about the 1975 shipwreck of the SS Edmund Fitzgerald, and the writing was as much about research as about creation. Lightfoot remains fascinated by the wreck, and he remains in touch with the families of some of the wreck’s victims.
“It has been amazing to me to see what has gone on in the aftermath of that tragedy: The people I’ve met, the places I’ve been and the experiences I’ve had as a result of that song,” he said. “It was a real research project in the writing, and I knew I had to make sure that I got it in proper chronological order. I did make up one verse in the middle, to complete the story. I used a line by Woody Guthrie: ‘Fellows, it’s been good to know ya.’ They wanted to make a movie about it and use the song, and I refused to issue a license. It’s a movie that would have left question marks about who would have been to blame for the wreck. People always have to know what caused everything.”
Lightfoot said an upcoming National Geographic special about the wreck does a fine job in explaining the event, and that the program effectively exonerates a young crewman named Bruce Hudson, who some people had blamed for not securing a hatch cover on the boat.
“The program proves that the hatch covers could not have caused the wreck,” Lightfoot said. “It clears Bruce, which is wonderful, because I know his mother quite well, and she loves her son.”
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