True Stories: The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald

Gordon Lightfoot: The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald

[purchase]

I have enjoyed all of the hit songs I have heard by Gordon Lightfoot, but many have a 1970s commercial sheen in the production that has kept me from exploring his work further. My research for this post has me rethinking that position. Certainly, from the sound of the song, you can tell that this was released on a major label. There are no quirks or mistakes that can either ruin or give an intimate and personal quality to an independent recording. Still, The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald is a song whose haunting quality grabbed me when I first heard it when it is was new, and the years have not changed that. What I found in researching the song is that many artists have tried and failed to create a quality cover of the song. I found folk versions that overdo the subtlety and lose the song’s haunted sound as a result. I found punk and hard rock versions that lose the song’s empathy by overdoing the drama. And there are jam band versions that lose track of the song altogether. Also, Gordon Lightfoot’s words have power, so instrumental versions exist for no reason that I can understand.

Our new theme is True Stories, and yes, there was a wreck of a ship called the Edmund Fitzgerald. Over the next two weeks, we may hear songs on happier topics, but some of the greatest tragedies in history have inspired great songs, so I am sure there will be more of those as well. The Edmund Fitzgerald sank, with all 29 hands lost, on November 10, 1975. You can find a great account of the incident here. Newsweek had a report of the wreck in their issue of November 24 that year, in which they misspelled the name of the ship, as the Edmond Fitzgerald. Gordon Lightfoot has said interviews that he felt this dishonored the men who died in the wreck and that this was why he wrote the song. The song must have come to him almost fully formed, because he recorded it in December of the same year. Lightfoot spelled the name of the ship correctly, but the song scanned and rhymed better when he changed the ship’s destination from Detroit to Cleveland. The old cook in the song was a Lightfoot invention, and some of the dialog in the song was not part of any official record. But the bottom line is this: Lightfoot’s song is the reason the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald is still remembered today, forty years later. And as popular as the original song was, no one has had even a minor hit with a cover in all these years. You have only to think of all of the other hits that have been covers in that time to realize how remarkable that is.

Steel: Gordon Lightfoot/Steel Rail Blues

purchase [Sit Down Young Stranger]

Steel strings on a guitar take a lot out of you: they're harder to depress and they end up putting calluses on the tips of your fingers. You need to keep at it on a daily basis. For this reason, I more or less  gave  up playing steel string guitars a few years back. It may be because I can't afford a decent guitar (better quality = less effort), but it may also be on account of all that metal - it cuts into your fingers something bad. I'm now a nylon man - with a lot of respect for thems that bend the steel around.

It looks like the only other time SMM has mentioned Gordon Lightfoot is back in 2008. Away back in 2008 Paul -no longer an active SMM contributor- included Lightfoot in a post about a <History> theme. 

Myself? Gordon Lightfoot's 1970 "Sit Down Young Stranger" was a favorite. No ... more: a starting point for a budding guitar player. Someone to emulate.  As I look back over the song list from the album after many years away, there isn't one that doesn’t bring back memories - a most powerful album (and his best-selling one). He's got Ry Cooder, John Sebastian, Van Dyke Parks and Randy Newman with him on the album. The Wiki says that maybe Kris Kristofferson also contributed. Pretty impressive. 

I guess (among all the good ones) it is the title song, Sit Down Young Stranger, that rings best: the steel strings are obvious here. The story is poignant. The quality of the vocals fits Lightfoot's folk-rock style. I read somewhere that Dylan thought this was Lightfoot's best - there are certainly a number of parallels: guitar style, vocal style and - to some extent, the lyrical/poetic message.

But I have chosen a different Lightfoot song to more closely match our theme and it's from a different album - his 1966 "Lightfoot!". If you look closely at the "Steel Rails" clip, you'll see that he has picks on his fingers - perhaps the true sign of a steel string player - if you want to make the strings ring, you kind of have to add some additional steel. Oh, and he's doing a variation of the "Travis" pick I mentioned earlier.

The steel rails, as per the ticket the girl sends, are the railroad tracks - made of steel. A bit thicker than the strings on his guitar, but made of the same material, capable of singing their own song.

History: The Motor City Is Burning

One of the worst riots in American history began on July 23, 1967, at the corner of 12th Street and Clairmount on the west side of Detroit. At the time I was a one-year-old baby living on the east side of Detroit. Luckily for my family, the riot never made it across town.

Caused by racial tensions, the "disturbance" lasted four days. Before it was over, National Guard tanks were rolling down the city streets, thousands of buildings were burned to the ground, and 43 people lost their lives. Read about it at here.

Detroit has never fully recovered. White flight to the suburbs increased dramatically after the riot. I have a friend whose family sold their house in Detroit for $1.00. We were renting at the time and it wasn't long before my family had moved out too. Metropolitan Detroit is now the most segregated population center in the United States.

There are at least two pop songs about the so-called 12th Street Riot:

Motor City Is Burning was recorded by both Detroit-based bluesman John Lee Hooker and Detroit-based punk-rockers MC5.

John Lee Hooker: The Motor City Is Burning [purchase]
MC5: Motor City Is Burning [purchase]

Canadian singer-songwriter Gordon Lightfoot (who has recorded a number of “history” songs) wrote Black Day in July in which he recounts the story of the riot in journalistic fashion.

Gordon Lightfoot: Black Day In July [purchase]

Black Day In July was released in 1968 and banned from airplay after the Martin Luther King assassination. In this interview, Lightfoot talks about reaction to the song.

A third song that is, at least, indirectly based on the 12th Street Riot is Panic In Detroit, which David Bowie wrote based on his conversations with friend, and Detroit rocker, Iggy Pop. Local legend has it that the song is about the riots, but I’m not 100% sure about that one.

David Bowie: Panic In Detroit [purchase]