Home | Songs By Year | Songs from 1976
The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald
Buy The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald now from AmazonFirst, read the Wikipedia article. Then, scroll down to see what other TopShelfReviews readers thought about the song. And once you've experienced the song, tell everyone what you thought about it.
Wikipedia article
{{Infobox song
| name = The Wreck of the 'Edmund Fitzgerald'
| cover = WreckEdmundFitzgerald.jpg
| alt =
| type = single
| artist = Gordon Lightfoot
| album = Summertime Dream
| B-side = The House You Live In
| released = August 1976
| recorded = December 1975
| studio = Eastern Sound Studios, Toronto
| venue =
| genre =
| length =
| label = Reprise
| writer = Gordon Lightfoot
| producer = *Lenny Waronker
*Gordon Lightfoot
| prev_title = Rainy Day People
| prev_year = 1975
| next_title = Race Among the Ruins
| next_year = 1976
| misc =
}}
"'The Wreck of the 'Edmund Fitzgerald' is a 1976 hit song written, composed and performed by Canadian singer-songwriter Gordon Lightfoot to commemorate the sinking of the bulk carrier SS 'Edmund Fitzgerald' on Lake Superior on November 10, 1975. Lightfoot drew his inspiration from 'Newsweek' article on the event, "The Cruelest Month", which it published in its November 24, 1975, issue. Lightfoot considers this song to be his finest work.
Appearing originally on Lightfoot's 1976 album 'Summertime Dream', the single version hit number 1 in his native Canada (in the 'RPM' national singles survey) on November 20, 1976, barely a year after the disaster. In the United States, it reached number 1 in 'Cashbox' and number 2 for two weeks in the 'Billboard' Hot 100 (behind Rod Stewart's "Tonight's the Night"), making it Lightfoot's second-most-successful single, behind only "Sundown". Overseas it was at best a minor hit, peaking at number 40 in the UK Singles Chart.
Lightfoot re-recorded the song in 1988 for the compilation album 'Gord's Gold, Vol. 2'.
Lyrics
The song contains a few artistic omissions and paraphrases. In a later interview aired on Canadian commercial radio, Lightfoot recounted how he had agonised over possible inaccuracies while trying to pen the lyrics until Lenny Waronker, his long-time producer and friend, finally removed his writer's block simply by advising him to play to his artistic strengths and "just tell a story". Lightfoot's passion for recreational sailing on the Great Lakes informs his ballad's verses throughout.
Deviations from the facts of the incident include:
* According to the song, 'Edmund Fitzgerald' was bound "fully loaded for Cleveland". In fact, the ship was heading for Zug Island, near Detroit, where it was set to discharge its cargo of taconite iron ore pellets before heading on to Cleveland, her home port, to wait out the winter.
* The 'Edmund Fitzgerald' was not "coming back from some mill in Wisconsin." Lake freighters that carry bulk iron ore are loaded at ore docks, not mills.
* Capt. Ernest McSorley had stated in his last radio transmission before the ship sank that he and the crew were "holding our own", not that they had "water coming in".
* In his lyrics Lightfoot employs poetic licence to describe the Mariners' Church of Detroit as "The Maritime Sailors' Cathedral".
* In a later live recording, Lightfoot recounts that a parishioner of the church informed him that the church is 'not' "musty". From that time, instead of singing "In a musty old hall...", he now sings "In a rustic old hall..."
* In March 2010, Lightfoot changed a line during live performances to reflect new findings that there had been no crew error involved in the sinking. The line originally read, "At 7 p.m. a main hatchway caved in; he said..."; Lightfoot now sings it as "At 7 p.m. it grew dark, it was then he said...". Lightfoot learned about the new research when contacted for permission to use his song for a History Channel documentary that aired on March 31, 2010. Lightfoot stated that he had no intention of changing the original copyrighted lyrics; instead, from then on, he has simply sung the new words during live performances.
Chart performance
Weekly charts
Year-end charts
Production
The song was recorded in December 1975 at Eastern Sound, a recording studio composed of two Victorian houses at 48 Yorkville Avenue in a then-hippie district of downtown Toronto. The famous studio, which also recorded Rush, Cat Stevens, Bruce Springsteen and Jimi Hendrix, was later torn down and replaced by a parking lot.
The song was the first commercial early digital multi-track recording tracked on the prototype 3M 32-track digital recorder, a novel technology for the time.
Pee Wee Charles and Terry Clements came up with "the haunting guitar and steel riffs" on a "second take" during the evening session.
Lightfoot cleared the studio and killed all the lights save the one illuminating his parchment of scribbled words when recording his vocal part.
Covers and derivative works
Guitarist Tony Rice recorded a cover of the song for his 1983 album, 'Church Street Blues.' It was later included on the compilation album 'Tony Rice Sings Gordon Lightfoot.'
During the 1984 United States presidential election, the comedian troupe Capitol Steps performed "The Wreck of the Walter 'Fritz' Mondale".
The Canadian art-rock group The Rheostatics recorded a version of the song for their 1991 album 'Melville'.
In 1995, two decades after Lightfoot's original song was written, singer-songwriter Camille West recorded a parody song with a similar rhythm titled "The Nervous Wreck of Edna Fitzgerald", about a well-to-do family's disastrous day at sea. She recorded and released it on her album 'Mother Tongue' (subtitled "Maternal Madness, Month by Month") that year. Ten years later, after she had joined the band Four Bitchin' Babes, she and the band performed the song live, prefacing it with the comment, "With apologies to Gordon Lightfoot." It was included on their album of that year, 'Gabby Road'.
Executive producer Paul Gross wanted to use the song for the 'Due South' episode "Mountie on the Bounty". Lightfoot agreed, but only if Gross gained approval from the families of all the men who lost their lives in the wreck. Gross and Jay Semko instead created a song about a fictional shipwreck on the Great Lakes"32 Down on the 'Robert McKenzie'.
The song "Back Home in Derry", with lyrics by Bobby Sands of the Provisional Irish Republican Army, was set to the tune of "The Wreck of the 'Edmund Fitzgerald"'. The song, which is about the penal transportation of Irishmen in the 19th century to Van Diemen's Land (modern day Tasmania), was first recorded by Christy Moore on his 1984 album 'Ride On', and has since been covered by a number of Irish artists.
A filk adaptation of the song called "The Ballad of Apollo XIII", with new lyrics by William Warren Jr., was performed by Julia Ecklar on the 1983 album 'Minus Ten and Counting'.Minus Ten and Counting liner notes
See also
* Canadian rock
* Music of Canada
References
Buy The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald now from Amazon
<-- Return to songs from 1976