Musician best known for folk-pop hits such as If You Could Read My Mind and The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald continued to tour in his later years
The Canadian singer-songwriter Gordon Lightfoot, best known for folk-pop hits such as If You Could Read My Mind and The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald, has died at the age of 84, his family has announced.Once called a “rare talent” by Bob Dylan, dozens of artists have covered Lightfoot’s work, including Elvis Presley, Barbra Streisand, Harry Belafonte, Johnny Cash, Anne Murray, Jane’s Addiction and Sarah McLachlan.
Often described as a poetic storyteller, Lightfoot remained keenly aware of his cultural influence. It was a role he took seriously. “I remember the thrill of being in front of the crowd,” Lightfoot said in a 2018 interview. “It was a stepping stone for me.”At 18, he headed to the US to study music for a year. But life in Hollywood wasn’t a good fit and it wasn’t long before Lightfoot returned to
As the folk music boom came to an end in the late 1960s, Lightfoot was already making his transition to pop. In 1971, he made his first appearance on the Billboard chart with If You Could Read My Mind. It reached No 5 and has spawned a number of covers.
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