Canadian musician Gordon Lightfoot, the prolific singer-songwriter recognized for such folk-pop hits as “If You Could Read My Mind” and “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald,” has died in Toronto aged 84.
He died in hospital on Monday of pure causes, his household mentioned in a press release launched by publicist Victoria Lord.
Known for his evocative lyrics and melodic compositions, Lightfoot obtained 5 Grammy nominations over time and gained 17 Juno awards, Canada’s equal music honour.
Lightfoot achieved the peak of his recognition within the Seventies, with songs from albums akin to “Sundown,” “Summertime Dream” and “Dream Street Rose” that constructed on his guitar-driven people roots to supply extra rock and pop-oriented songs.
He retained a loyal following in Canada and the United States by means of intensive live performance touring.
Lightfoot’s catalogue of compositions tops 200 songs, plenty of them coated by such performers as Bob Dylan, Elvis Presley, Judy Collins, Barbra Streisand, Glen Campbell and Richie Havens. His “For Lovin’ Me” and “Early Morning Rain” grew to become hits for the folks trio Peter, Paul & Mary.
Lightfoot emerged from the folks music motion of the mid-Nineteen Sixties with signature tunes akin to “Canadian Railroad Trilogy” and “Pussywillows, Cat-Tails.”
In the Seventies, he picked up an electrical guitar to pen pop ballads akin to “Beautiful” and “I’m Not Supposed to Care.”
Lightfoot’s 1976 epic, “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald,” in regards to the drowning of 29 sailors when a freighter sank in a storm on Lake Superior, stays one among followers’ most beloved songs.
In it, Lightfoot coupled a hovering melody with poignant lyrics in regards to the sailors’ final hours.
He additionally topped the singles charts with such titles because the wistful 1974 music “Carefree Highway” and the ballad “If You Could Read My Mind,” his first main worldwide hit from 1971, a couple of dissolving marriage.
“If You Could Read My Mind” launched a profitable run at Warner Bros Records, after Lightfoot defected from his earlier label, United Artists.
He had been sad there partly over an absence of assist he felt when many US radio stations banned his 1968 single “Black Day in July,” about riots in Detroit the earlier yr, seeing it as too incendiary.
Two different main Seventies hits, “Sundown” and “Rainy Day People”, had been reportedly impressed by his unstable romance with backup singer and rock groupie Cathy Smith.
Smith died in 2020 after serving time in jail for injecting comedian actor John Belushi with a deadly dose of heroin and cocaine in 1982.
Aside from writing lyrics and music, Lightfoot carried out his songs in a heat tenor suited to ballads, although his voice grew thinner over time, and he was recognized for his clear articulation as a vocalist.
He survived a serious well being disaster at age 63 in 2002, when he collapsed from extreme abdomen ache earlier than a live performance in his hometown of Orilla, Ontario, and had emergency surgical procedure for stomach bleeding brought on by a ruptured aorta.
He endured weeks of hospitalisation and a number of operations earlier than returning to the recording studio and stay performances.
At the time of his sickness, Canadian nation singer and admirer Ian Tyson saluted Lightfoot as a nationwide treasure.
“I don’t think anybody before or since has, or will have, the impact on Canadian culture, through popular music or folk music, that Gordon Lightfoot had,” Tyson advised Reuters then.
Following news of his loss of life, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau tweeted that Canada “has lost one of our greatest singer-songwriters”.
“Gordon Lightfoot captured our country’s spirit in his music and in doing so, he helped shape Canada’s soundscape. May his music continue to inspire future generations, and may his legacy live on forever,” Trudeau wrote.
Source: www.perthnow.com.au
