Gordon Lightfoot, a Canadian folk singer whose rich, plaintive baritone and gift for melodic songwriting made him one of the most popular recording artists of the 1970s, died Monday night in Toronto. He was 84.
His death, at Sunnybrook Hospital, was confirmed by his publicist, Victoria Lord. No cause was given.
Lightfoot, a fast-rising star in Canada in the early 1960s, broke through to international success when his friends and fellow Canadians Ian and Sylvia Tyson recorded two of his songs, Early Morning Rain and For Lovin’ Me.
When Peter, Paul and Mary came out with their own versions, and Marty Robbins reached the top of the country charts with Lightfoot’s Ribbon of Darkness, Lightfoot’s reputation soared. Overnight, he joined the ranks of songwriters such as Bob Dylan, Phil Ochs and Tom Paxton, all of whom influenced his style.
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When folk music ebbed in popularity, overwhelmed by the British invasion, Lightfoot began writing ballads aimed at a broader audience. He scored one hit after another, beginning in 1970 with the heartfelt If You Could Read My Mind, inspired by the break-up of his first marriage.
In quick succession, he recorded the hits Sundown, Carefree Highway, Rainy Day People and The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald, which he wrote after reading a Newsweek article about the sinking of an iron-ore carrier in Lake Superior in 1975, with the loss of all 29 crew members.
For Canadians, Lightfoot was a national hero, a home-grown star who stayed home even after achieving spectacular success in the United States and catered to his fervent fans with constant cross-country tours. His ballads on Canadian themes, including Canadian Railroad Trilogy, pulsated with a love for the nation’s rivers and forests, which he explored on ambitious canoe trips far into the hinterlands.
His personal style, reticent and self-effacing – he avoided interviews and flinched when confronted with praise – also went down well. “Sometimes I wonder why I’m being called an icon, because I really don’t think of myself that way,” he told The Globe and Mail in 2008. “I’m a professional musician, and I work with very professional people. It’s how we get through life.”
Gordon Meredith Lightfoot Jr was born Nov 17th, 1938, in Orillia, Ontario, where his father managed a dry-cleaning plant. As a boy, he sang in a church choir, performed on local radio shows and shined in singing competitions. “Man, I did the whole bit: oratorio work, Kiwanis contests, operettas, barbershop quartets,” he told Time magazine in 1968.
He played piano, drums and guitar as a teenager, and while still in high school wrote his first song, a topical number about the Hula-Hoop craze with a catchy last line: “I guess I’m just a slob and I’m gonna lose my job, ’cause I’m Hula-Hula-Hoopin’ all the time.”
After studying composition and orchestration at the Westlake College of Music in Los Angeles, he returned to Canada. For a time, he was a member of the Singing Swinging Eight, a singing and dancing troupe on the television show Country Hoedown, but he soon became part of the Toronto folk scene, performing at the same coffee houses and clubs as Ian and Sylvia, Joni Mitchell, Neil Young and Leonard Cohen.
He formed a folk duo, the Two Tones, with a fellow Hoedown performer, Terry Whelan. The duo recorded a live album in 1962, Two Tones at the Village Corner. The next year, while travelling in Europe, he served as host of The Country and Western Show on BBC television.
Lightfoot, who lived in Toronto, is survived by his wife, Kim Hasse, six children – Fred, Ingrid, Miles, Meredith, Eric and Galen – and several grandchildren, according to Lord, his publicist. His first two marriages ended in divorce. His older sister, Beverley Eyers, died in 2017. – This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
