http://www.timesleader.com/features/...0-06-2010.html
>Posted: October 6
Updated: Today at 1:10 AM
Lightfoot inspires with story, songs REVIEW
Legendary singer-songwriter, who’s overcome health issues, still can move an audience.
By Brad Patton
bpatton@timesleader.com
Freelance Music Writer
WILKES-BARRE – Early into his performance at the F.M. Kirby Center for the Performing Arts on Tuesday evening, it seemed legendary singer-songwriter Gordon Lightfoot was trying to save his voice.
Amanda hrycyna/for the times leader - photographer
came out promptly at curtain time, absorbed the applause silently and immediately rattled off two songs.
Before the third, he broke the ice with a joke.
“Been through a few changes,” he said, pausing slightly before delivering the punchline. “Couple more women bit the dust.”
The past few years have been hard on Lightfoot and his once-remarkable baritone. He suffered a ruptured abdominal aortic aneurysm in September 2002, had a tracheotomy and remained in a coma for six weeks. After recovering and returning to the stage, he suffered a mild stroke during a performance in September 2006 that left him without the use of two fingers on his right hand for a time. He briefly used a substitute guitarist while he recuperated, and has played all of his guitar parts as they were written and recorded since early 2007.
His voice might not be what it once was, but the songs he sings still sound as fresh and inspired as the day he wrote them.
Some of the outstanding songs he sang for the Kirby Center crowd included “Beautiful,” “Cotton Jenny,” “Rainy Day People,” and “Alberta Bound” in the first set, and signature tunes like “Early Morning Rain,” “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” and “Blackberry Wine” in the second.
Lightfoot was known mainly as a songwriter in the 1960s as early songs such as “Early Morning Rain,” “For Lovin’ Me,” “Ribbon of Darkness” and “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face” were recorded by the likes of Elvis Presley, The Kingston Trio, Bob Dylan, Marty Robbins, Jerry Lee Lewis and Peter, Paul and Mary.
His own recordings were hits in his homeland of Canada between 1962 and 1968, and his first international success was “If You Could Read My Mind,” which reached No. 5 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1970 and No. 1 on the magazine’s Adult Contemporary chart.
His only No. 1 on the main Billboard chart was 1974’s “Sundown,” but he topped the AC charts with three consecutive singles: “Sundown” and “Carefree Highway” ( both from 1974) and “Rainy Day People” (1975).
Perhaps his most famous recording, “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald,” about a real-life shipwreck that killed 29 men, reached No. 2 on the pop chart and No. 9 on the AC chart in 1976.
Wilkes-Barre, PA Show
