Every Friday around 11 a.m. Central, it’s time for Classic Americana on Radio Heartland. We pull a special track from the archives or from deep in the shelves to spotlight a particular artist or song.

Canadian singer-songwriter Gordon Lightfoot was born November 17, 1938, and began singing as a young boy at school and at church, and even occasionally on a local radio station.

And while Lightfoot’s birthday was in November, it was also a critical month in his songwriting career; it was, after all, on November 10, 1975, that the iron-ore ship, the S.S. Edmund Fitzgerald, sank in a storm on Lake Superior, which resulted in the loss of the entire crew. Lightfoot himself enjoyed sailing on the Great Lakes, and he was so moved by the news of the Edmund Fitzgerald, he wrote a song for the ages that chronicles the ship’s final voyage.

Although the epic nature of “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” cannot be disputed, Lightfoot typically wrote songs much closer to home, often about matters of the heart. Lightfoot’s thought-provoking lyrics on such songs as “If You Could Read My Mind,” “Rainy Day People,” and “Sundown” possess a buttery smoothness thanks to Lightfoot’s warm, baritone vocals. Fellow Canadian Robbie Robertson called Gordon Lightfoot “a national treasure.”

For our Classic Americana pick this week, we’ll feature Lightfoot’s song, “Sundown.” The story behind the song may be rooted in feelings of suspicion in the midst of a fraught relationship, but the song is beautiful nonetheless. Certainly it resounded with listeners, as it reached No. 1 in the singles charts in both the U.S. and Canada.

Lightfoot died in Toronto in 2023 at the age of 84. Among many honors and awards he’s received, Gordon Lightfoot is a member of the Canadian Music Hall of Fame, the Canadian Country Music Hall of Fame, and the Songwriters Hall of Fame. He’s been commemorated on a postage stamp in Canada, and there is a bronze sculpture in honor of him in a lakeside park in Orillia, Ontario, Gordon Lightfoot’s hometown.

Above: On May 4, 2023, the staff of Folkway Music in Waterloo, Ontario, paid tribute to the late Gordon Lightfoot with a spontaneous jam session.

External Links

Gordon Lightfoot – official site