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Senior Member
Join Date: Jun 2003
Location: New Jersey U.S.A. ex UK and Canada
Posts: 4,846
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Re: "Lightfoot" Album Liner Notes
OK 1968 here is the text
The new music Lightfoot's impact
By Dick MacDonald
MANY young performers in the folk idiom, to paraphrase former Weaver Lee Hays, no longer suggest "let's play some Flatt and Scruggs." They probabIy say, instead,"let's sing some Lightfoot." And this is as good a yardstick as any to measure the impact the 30-year-old Canadian singer-composer has had on North American popular music.If the success of a song can be judged by its apparent qualities of longevity, there is little doubt a healthy collection of Gordon Lightfoot's tunes will persist.
A year ago, The Toronto Telegram said: "No performer in the nation mirrors the country with more sensitivity and beauty than Lightfoot. And come the second Centennial, many of his compositions will be learned as part of our school system."
Lightfoot, a native of Stephen Leacock's Sunshine Town (OriIlia,
Ont.) , is a folk poet of the first order. He was in Montreal last
year for appearances at Expo 67McGill University and the
NewPenelope coffeehouse.Tuesday, he starts a week-long
engagement at the MaisonneuveTheatre of. Place des Arts.
The smoke is. rising
in the shadows overhead,
My glass is almost empty.
I read again between the lines
upon the page,The words of love you sent me.
The songs display compassion,love, loneliness, anti-romance, the
down-and-outness of rubbies,humor wry or witty, bitterness.
They talk of things real.
The internationall:known artists who have recorded his material form a who's who in con temporary music of all ilks.
With eIoquent simplicity, he speaks of the physically tough men who opened Canada and the mentally-rugged men and women who still are building and creating and exploring this land.
We are the navvies who work
on the railway,
Swinging our hammers in the
bright blazin' sun.
Livin' on stew and drinkin' bad
whiskey,
Bending our backs 'til the rail
road is done.
He writes, too, of today, Black Day in July, stemming from the Detroit tragedy last year. Despite restricted play in northern cities of the United States following the
assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, the poem has sold more than 50,000 copies to date - well over sales for previous Lightfoot single recordings.
And the hand. of the have-nots,
Keep falling out of reach..
His recently-released third album is selling beyond all expectations. Accompanied by bass and guitar, as usual, and drums and a violin section, there are hints of
over-arranging. One wouId be hard put to suggest this album,Did She Mention My Name, is either superior or inferior to the two earlier LPs. All are superb.In fact, the contents of the first two albums have been placed in four- and eight-track cartridge form, making Lightfoot the first Canadian artist to have recordings released internationally on tape.
With each passIng month, his schedule becomes busier. Since
February, he has swung from the Atlantic Provinces to central Can-
ada to California. CBC-TV broke a bit of tradition last month by cast-
ing an hour long program around him.
RPM MUSIC WEEKLY named him "top folk singer" in Canada,The Telegram gave him an After Four Award as "best Canadian
male singer." The ,Midem Trophy went to Lightfoot for his most-
record-sales-in Canada achievement in 1967. (Other Midem winners at Cannes,France included The Beatles, Frank Sinatra and
MireiIle Mathieu.) "
His background--a year's study at California's Westlake ColIege of
Music, C(h)oral singing for the CBC, a summer in England with his
own television country and western specials, dancing on Country
Hoedown and a growing number of club and concert engagements
from 1964 on has made him a polished and versatile musician.
Gordon Lightfoot is in the tradition of the troubador and minstrel.
If only you could see the closing
of the day;
If only you could see where the
dawn breaks away;
Where the mountain meets the
sky, and the white clouds
fly,
Where the long river. flows, by
my window.
THE .MONTREAL STAR, Mar 4, 1968
Last edited by johnfowles; 04-14-2009 at 11:46 AM.
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