RECKAFEEDB
CANADIAN MUSIC’S
LONG TREK
If we sometimes deplore that the Canadian sound is too rarely heard on our own airwaves, we might console ourselves by recalling that back in the 60’s there was no real Canadian recording industry at all.
The Toronto Telegram actually ran an article with the title Canada Has a Booming Record Industry (but only because it’s 95% American). Said the article under the pro- vocative headline, “We have so many good records available to us from the States that there’s really not much point in doing a great deal of recording up here.”
The knights of the Canadian labels finally reacted. Canadian musicians must have a place on the artistic scene without exiling themselves. Courageous and deter- mined, laughing off the insults, the hurdles, the disappointments, the setbacks, these brave pioneers create the Canadian Talent Library. It was a non profit organization, which would create recordings by Canadian composers and musicians. However the CTL has no impact on the radio landscape. Station owners and programmers heap ridicule on the enterprise.
However there is a worrisome rumor on the horizon. A new regulatory body, the CRTC, might be thinking about imposing a quota of Canadian content on the reluctant broadcasters. Frightened by this unthinkable possibility, the more powerful station owners league together to inflate “cancon” and head off the menace. They fill their airtime with Joni Mitchell, Anne Murray, and of course Gordon Lightfoot.
The new chairman of the CRTC, Pierre Juneau, saw through the scheme. He told the owners that, since there is so much cancon on the airwaves already, they can’t possibly object to a quota…of 30%.
Subsequently, many Canadians thought they recalled that Mitchell, Murray and Lightfoot had become popular because of the regulations. Not so. All three were famous not only in Canada but in the US and elsewhere before “cancon” rules were ever dreamed of.
The regulations did have their effect, however, and the choice of recordings played on Canadian radio stations changed dramatically…and forever.
On October 2, 1997, at the opera house in his home town, and before his reconstituted family and his mother, the principal auditorium of the opera house is renamed the Gordon Lightfoot Auditorium.
Lightfoot loves to tour. In 2001 he sings at the House of Blues in Las Vegas, as well as the MGM Grand, the Desert Inn, and the Orleans.
All seems well when in September 2002, at a concert in Orillia, he is struck down by an abdominal hemorrhage and he is rushed to hospital. Follow- ing surgery he is in a coma that lasts several weeks. His loved ones, and indeed all Canadians, follow his medical bulletins.
Fortunately he survives and recov- ers, and he spends little time thinking about this brush with death. As soon as he leaves hospital in October 2003, he takes guitar in hand and begins vocal exercises. With a new album, Harmony, and an appearance on Canadian Idol, he goes back on the road.
With his usual wry humor, he titles
it The Better Late Than Never Tour.
An unexpected gift
Before closing this glorious chapter in Canadian artistic life, let me empha- size that the Gordon Lightfoot of which I have spoken is in no way diminished or weakened by illness. He is a model for us all. Realizing how lucky he has been, he trains seriously and regularly. He is, thus, a mature man, full of health, perfectly recovered against all
SOFTW
What about the Lightfoot style? He has been called a crooner, and I leave it to you to judge. What I hear is a superb baritone voice, only moderately powerful but always impressive, and sometimes troubling. When he sings, he seems to sing for you alone.
The artist honored
Gordon Lightfoot came onto the record scene well before there were regulations forcing radio stations to play Canadian music (see Canadian Music’s Long Trek above). It took them years to finally get around to promoting Canadian music, including Lightfoot’s. I think I can venture to say that he helped them out too.
68 ULTRA HIGH FIDELITY Magazine
The smattering of songs I have quoted in this article give only a hint of his inexhaustible fountain of inspiration and his talent for turning inspiration into song. That talent explains his rise to the summits of artistic fame.
From 1965 through 1978, Lightfoot receives 17 Juno Awards: best folk singer, best singer, best composer, folk record- ing of the year. He enters the Juno Hall of Fame in 1986. He is nominated five times for Grammy Awards: for Did She Mention My Name?, If You Could Read My Mind and The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald. He is made a member of the Order of Canada in 1988, and a Com- panion of the Order of Canada 15 years later.
expectations, who has lost none of his charisma. Indeed — and I’ve saved this for the last — after a US tour that took him across the country he will, next Fall, begin a
He will start in Vancouver in Octo- ber. From there he will go to Montreal’s Place des Arts, Toronto’s Massey Hall (his favorite!), Edmonton, Calgary, Saskatoon, Regina, Winnipeg, Thunder Bay and Ottawa.
He will, I predict, have a great time, for he has never concealed the fact he prefers to share his music in person with his fans rather than being locked away in a recording studio. “The pure pleasure of playing live never wears off, even after 40 years in the business,” he says.
