Canadian folk singer Gordon Lightfoot, who died Monday at the age of 84, had one hit famous for defying Top 40 logic.
His 1976 folk ballad, “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald,” was unusual because it was over six minutes long, about twice as long as most pop hits. In 1975, he meticulously recreated the real-life tragedy of the sinking of a cargo ship with 29 crew members on Lake Superior.
“It’s a documentary song, if you think about it,” said Eric Greenberg, a longtime friend of the singer who interviewed Mr. Lightfoot as a student journalist since the late 1970s. co-wrote a song with him.
A typical Top 40 hit plot usually consists of “a boy meets a girl, a boy breaks up with a girl or comes back, or you left me, and so on,” Greenberg said. said by phone from New York City. “It’s not a 5, 6, 7 minute story. It’s a factual story. In Gordon’s case, it’s been vetted to make sure all the facts are correct.”
Discover the true story that inspired The Shipwreck of Edmund Fitzgerald and the song that kept that memory alive.
disappearing ship
The Edmund Fitzgerald, a 729-foot ore carrier, was one of the largest freighters on the Great Lakes when it left Superior, Wisconsin on November 9, 1975, carrying iron pellets bound for Detroit.
The next day, the ship was caught in a windstorm averaging 60 to 65 mph. The captain reported that waves of 20 to 25 feet were washing over the deck, and two of her broken vents were pouring water below the deck.
That night, the Edmund Fitzgerald sank in water only about 50 degrees near the coast of Ontario and Michigan. Nearby ships reported seeing their lights go out in the snow.
The Coast Guard then found lifeboats, life rings and other debris from the ship. However, because the lifeboats were self-inflating, their discovery does not necessarily mean they were in use. None of the 29 crew members survived.
unlikely success
The morning after the Fitzgerald crashed, the pastor of Detroit’s Mariner’s Church rang the bell 29 times. An Associated Press reporter knocked on the door of the church, interviewed the pastor, and submitted a report that was published in the newspaper.
Mr. Lightfoot read the article. Soon after, he began singing songs about shipwrecks during previously scheduled recording sessions. According to the 2020 documentary Gordon Lightfoot: If You Can Read My Mind, his band joined and the first version of the song they recorded was later released.
The song was not expected to become a hit single, as its length was too long to be broadcast on the radio. However, it spent 21 weeks on the Billboard charts, Peak at 2nd place, one notch behind Mr. Lightfoot’s only No. 1 hit, “Sundown”. It also turned the story of the sinking into a modern legend.
Yet, unlike songs that use real-life stories as the basis for embellishment, Mr. Lightfoot’s ballads adhere precisely to real-life details. The weight of the ore was accurate, for example, “Edmund Fitzgerald weighs 26,000 tons more than the sky weighs.” So did the number of times church bells rang in Detroit.
Decades later, Mr. Lightfoot changed Lyrics shortly after the accident investigation revealed that the waves, rather than crew error, led to the wreck. In the new lyrics, he sang that his November night on Lake Superior went dark at 7 o’clock—not that the main hatch had caved in.
“He was a methodical, truth-seeker,” Greenberg said.
an enduring legacy
Like “The Shipwreck of Edmund Fitzgerald” creator, endured as a Canadian classic long after it slipped off the Top 40 charts. Bluegrass guitarist Tony Rice (who released an entire album of Lightfoot covers) and rock his band Leo Statics and The Dandy Warhols Sang covers for many years.
Canadian singer-songwriter Sarah McLachlan said in a 2020 documentary, “The melody is so powerful, he’s such a great storyteller and such a beautiful lyricist.” Become.”
Mr. Greenberg said Mr. Lightfoot was proud of it for decades, keeping newspaper clippings and items given to him by the crew’s families in his home.
There was one downside to the song’s success. It turned a shipwreck about 500 feet deep in Canadian territory into a diver’s booty, upsetting the families of the missing sailors. In 2006, the Ontario government adopted the law Protecting your site.
