Gordon Meredith Lightfoot Jr (Nov 1938 - 1st May 2023) R.I.P.
Gordon Lightfoot, Canada's legendary folk singer-songwriter known for If You Could Read My Mind and Sundown and for songs that told tales of Canadian identity, died on Monday. He was 84.
Considered one of the most renowned voices to emerge from Toronto's Yorkville folk club scene in the 1960s, Lightfoot's songs, including "For Lovin' Me", "Early Morning Rain", "Steel Rail Blues", "Ribbon of Darkness"—a number one hit on the U.S. country chart with Marty Robbins's cover in 1965—and "Black Day in July", about the 1967 Detroit riot, brought him wide recognition in the 1960s. Canadian chart success with his own recordings began in 1962 with the No. 3 hit "(Remember Me) I'm the One", followed by recognition and charting abroad in the 1970s. He topped the US Hot 100 or Adult Contemporary (AC) chart with the hits "If You Could Read My Mind" (1970), "Sundown" (1974); "Carefree Highway" (1974), "Rainy Day People" (1975), and "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" (1976), and had many other hits that appeared in the top 40 In the more than 60 years since he launched his career, he performed in well over 1,500 concerts and recorded 500 songs.
In 1971, he made his first appearance on the Billboard chart with If You Could Read My Mind. It reached No. 5 and has since spawned scores of covers.
Lightfoot's popularity peaked in the mid-1970s when both his single and album, "Sundown," topped the Billboard charts, his first and only time doing so. During his career, Lightfoot collected 12 Juno Awards, including one in 1970 when it was called the Gold Leaf. In 1986, he was inducted into the Canadian Recording Industry Hall of Fame, now the Canadian Music Hall of Fame. He received the Governor General's award in 1997 and was ushered into the Canadian Country Music Hall Of Fame in 2001.
Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana...