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Title: Gordon Lightfoot’s Tale of a Ship’s Crew and Its Captain
Source:
Best Classic Bands
URL Source: https://bestclassicbands.com/gordon ... oot-edmund-fitzgerald-1-22-19/
Published: Aug 10, 2019
Author: Greg Brodsky
Post Date: 2019-08-10 18:47:51 by Deckard
Ping List: *Music* Subscribe to *Music*
Keywords: None
Views: 9974
Comments: 29
Email When listeners first heard Gordon Lightfoot‘s heart-wrenching tale of the 29 brave souls who lost their lives aboard a ship in his 1976 hit, “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald,” many assumed that he had chosen a subject from perhaps a century earlier. The singer-songwriter had scored a handful of hits in his native Canada and had first come to the attention of worldwide audiences with his 1970 smash, “If You Could Read My Mind.” After a series of mid-chart singles, Lightfoot scored what would be his biggest hit, 1974’s “Sundown,” which reached #1 in the U.S. and Canada. It was followed that same year by another big success, “Carefree Highway.” When “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” was released as a single in August 1976, Top 40 audiences listened spellbound to Lightfoot’s tale no matter how many times they heard it. The freighter “with a crew and good captain well seasoned” was traveling from Wisconsin to Detroit – Lightfoot used artistic license to sub-in “Cleveland” as the destination – with a load of “twenty six thousand tons” of iron ore. In the song’s first verse, Lightfoot hints of danger “when the skies of November turn gloomy.” Soon enough, the gales of November came slashin’, when afternoon came it was freezing rain, in the face of a hurricane west wind. As Lightfoot continues, the ship’s cook tells the men that the worsening weather is “too rough to feed ya.” And then, just two lines later, comes the kicker… “Fellas, it’s been good to know ya.” What?!? (That line never fails to elicit chills.) Lightfoot’s lyrics continue: The Captain wired in he had water comin’ in, and the good ship and crew was in peril. And later that night when his lights went out of sight, came the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald. Lightfoot’s tale is, indeed, based on a true story. The SS Edmund Fitzgerald sank on Lake Superior, or as the songwriter writes, “Gitche Gumee,” which the poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow had also called it in his epic poem of 1855, The Song of Hiawatha. But the ship was no 19th century freighter. The sinking of the SS Edmund Fitzgerald had taken place on November 10, 1975. Lightfoot read about it in Newsweek later that month and wrote the song just weeks later. In 2010, he told a Savannah, Ga. publication that he has been to the Maritime Sailors Cathedral in Detroit several times to sing the song and greet the local sea captains. (He describes it in the song’s ending–the church bell chimed ’til it rang twenty-nine times.) The Captain had never sent a distress signal. His last message was, “We are holding our own.” Watch Lightfoot perform the song in 2000, from his Live in Reno DVD The single debuted at #89 on August 28, 1976, ultimately reaching #2 that November, one year after that fateful day. Related: What else was at the top in November 1976? Lightfoot is the subject of a new 2-CD collection, The Complete Singles: 1970-1980, which features all of the A- and B-sides that he recorded for Warner Bros. Records, including the ones mentioned above. It arrives March 1 via Real Gone Music. Lightfoot, born November 17, 1938, keeps a busy tour schedule. Tickets are available here and here.
Poster Comment: The wind in the wires made a tattle-tale sound Pure poetry, worthy of Poe or Longfellow. Living near Lake Superior and remembering the day the ship went down, the song still gives me chills. The songs "Carefree Highway", "Sundown" and "If You Could Read My Mind" are all reminiscent of the late Jim Croce's music.
And a wave broke over the railing
And every man knew, as the captain did too,
T'was the witch of November come stealin'
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#22. To: Deckard (#0)
Lake Superior is very cold, and it is true: she does not give up her dead. No bodies were ever found.
#25. To: Vicomte13 (#22)
Right you are. Divers see farm animals below the thermocline in there that have fallen in and will tumble around down there for months if not years in the cold, cold waters. I've been out in the middle of Superior in a real big boat when we hit a large wave. Had to hold on the railing and realized that if I had fallen in they'd have to be damn quick to get me out. Even in June hypothermia isn't a distant prospect. The shallow beaches of Lake Huron are OK in the early summer, but the deeper parts of Lake Michigan present a challenge for the hardiest swimmers. Get lost out there and the sharks may not get you, but you'll go unconscious out there before you drown. Small mercy. BTW some of the posters here that do so much to make this place so ugly. Do you think they carry on so because they are so ugly inside??
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Replies to Comment # 22. Lake Superior is very cold, and it is true: she does not give up her dead.
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