Gordon Lightfoot - The United Artists Collection
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Music CD Cover
Artist: Gordon LightfootEdition: Music CD
CD Release Date: 1993-10-05
Music Label: Capitol
Soundtracks:
Music CD 1
- Rich Man's Spiritual
- Long River
- Way I Feel [Version 1]
- For Lovin' Me
- The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face
- Changes
- Early Morning Rain
- Steel Rail Blues
- Sixteen Miles (To Seven Lakes)
- I'm Not Sayin'
- Pride of Man
- Ribbon of Darkness
- Oh Linda
- Peaceful Waters
- Walls
- If You Got It
- Softly
- Crossroads
- A Minor Ballad
- Go-Go Round
- Rosanna
- Home from the Forest
- I'll Be Alright
- Song for a Winter's Night
- Canadian Railroad Trilogy
- Way I Feel [Version 2]
- Wherefor and Why
- The Last Time I Saw Her
- Black Day in July
- May I
- Magnificent Outpouring
- Does Your Mother Know
- The Mountains and Maryann
- Pussywillows, Cat-Tails
- I Want to Hear It from You
- Something Very Special
- Boss Man
- Did She Mention My Name
- Long Way Back Home
- Unsettled Ways
- Long Thin Dawn
- Bitter Green
- Circle Is Small
- Marie Christine
- Cold Hands from New York
- Affair on 8th Avenue
- Don't Beat Me Down
- The Gypsy
- If I Could
Free Music Notes for The United Artists Collection
Free Music Review: The most essential Lightfoot recordings
Hit: 5 Stars
This is Lightfoot at his best, his songs from 1966-1968, when he was 27-29 years old and still belonged to Canada, not to the world. These four early albums, in their entirety, reflect a simpler time, when the elements of music (songwriting, playing and singing) were more craft than production. His voice never sounded better, quivering with an effortless, natural vibrato that gradually decreased over subsequent albums. The songs are as good as any he ever wrote, and the three written by others are equally good: "Changes" by Phil Ochs, "Pride of Man" by Hamilton Camp, and "First Time Ever I Saw Your Face" by Ewan McColl. (Lightfoot's recording of "First Time" predates Roberta Flack by 5 years).
Lightfoot's Canadian-ness is explicit in songs like "Crossroads" and "Canadian Railroad Trilogy", but also present in many of the songs that use natural imagery of winter, woods, cold rain, withered leaves, long rivers and delicate, fleeting springs, summers and falls. His roots are in a mostly rural area about 100 miles north of Toronto where such country abounds. His lyrics cross south of the border on "Black Day in July", describing the 1967 Detroit riot like a breathless reporter with an acute sense of poetry. As a traveling singer/guitarist with smashing good looks, one can only assume his many songs to or about women are drawn to some degree from experience. They range from the kiss-offs "Oh, Linda" and "For Lovin' Me", the homey comfort of "Rosana" to the longing of "The Last Time I Saw Her" and "Affair on 8th Avenue". Then there's the girl breaking away from her mother in "Does Your Mother Know?", the nameless woman who sent him a train ticket home that he gambled away in "Steel Rail Blues", and the hometown sweetheart of "Did She Mention My Name?" The pleasures and pains of the road is another Lightfoot theme, and "Long Thin Dawn" leads this category. It also gives us a peek at a country music idiom that has been more prevalent on Lightfoot's recent recordings.
Lightfoot's melodies are simple but never dull. Instrumentally, most of these songs have just two acoustic guitars and an acoustic bass - sometimes less, sometimes a little more - the cello on "A Minor Ballad", for example, is inspired. Lightfoot and fellow-guitarist Red Shea are very skilled at their instruments, and the performances are raw, uncluttered, with only small orchestral touches on some tracks, especially from his third album. The interplay of woodwinds and strings on "Pussywillows" is especially nice, as are the strings on "Does Your Mother Know?" and "The Last Time I Saw Her". These strings embellish the music, unlike much 70s music where string backgrounds formed a kind of uniform sentimental mash that detracted from the artistry (or lack thereof) of the musicians. Take Lightfoot's own "Carefree Highway" from 1974, for example. It's a great song, one of my favorites, but notice how the strings subtract from the performance. Here they add.
If you are a Lightfoot fan, no greatest hits compilation can possibly negate your need for this album. The "Gord's Gold" compilation comes in for special criticism for its inferior remakes of many of the songs here, complete with "sentimental mash" strings. But even if the songs hadn't been remade, too many of the best ones would still be missing. Nothing but the whole of these recordings would ever do.
The United Artists Collection Poster
This two-disc, 49-song collection combines Lightfoot's first four albums into one specially priced package and offers a comprehensive look at the Canadian singer-songwriter before he achieved pop stardom. These late-1960s recordings are more pared down than his better-known 1970s work, showing Lightfoot to be a thoughtful songwriter who was equally comfortable with personal love songs and more political fare. A much stronger folkie sensibility is on display here, which may be a revelation to those only familiar to his glossier folk-pop work, but a boon to his longtime followers. --Marc GreilsamerCountry Music CDs
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