Great news, for a Canadian folk icon.
Canadian folk music legend Gordon Lightfoot famously got his start in 1964 when Ian Tyson introduced him to rock’s first great manager, Albert Grossman, who also managed Bob Dylan, The Band, Richie Havens and Janis Joplin.
“I’d see Bob Dylan in the office,” Lightfoot once told me . “And Janis was in a corner reading a book.”
This week Lightfoot returns to the city where it all began, New York, where he will be keeping good company on Thursday night when he is inducted in the American Songwriters Hall of Fame, during a star-studded event at the Marriott Marquis Hotel.
Other inductees at the $1000-per-person benefit are Bob Seger, Don Schlitz, Harvey Schmidt & Tom Jones and Jim Steinman; presenters include Stevie Nicks, Dave Grohl and Meatloaf; and Bette Midler will receive the Sammy Cahn Lifetime Achievement Award. Lightfoot will perform his best-known hit song If You Could Read My Mind at the ceremony and Lyle Lovett perform Sundown.
My favourite song of Gord Lightfoot’s always has been, and always will be, The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.
