Sunday November 29, 2020 “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzerald” Gordon Lightfoot

This week we are going to spend some time with story songs.  Yes I know most every song could be considered a story song but these tunes will all have a beginning, middle and an end, and each could each start out ‘once upon a time’...and they’re all a bit longer than typical radio hits.

So let’s start with an obvious example: once upon a time there was a ship called the Edmund Fitzgerald and it should never have left Wisconsin bound for Cleveland that November.

This is a factual retelling of a shipwreck that claimed the lives of 29 crew members. On November 10, 1975, the S.S. Edmund Fitzgerald broke in half and sank in Lake Superior. The ship was caught in a storm with reported winds from 35 to 52 knots, and waves anywhere from 10 to 35 feet high.  Ouch!

Written by Canadian singer/songwriter Gordon Lightfoot  (real name) who said "...it was quite an undertaking to do that, I went and bought all of the old newspapers, got everything in chronological order, and went ahead and did it because I already had a melody in my mind and it was from an old Irish dirge that I heard when I was about three and a half years old."  Who remembers stuff from when they were age three!?

Gordon Lightfoot sang in his church’s choir as a youth, studied jazz composition and orchestration at Westlake College of Music in California and was represented early in his career by Albert Grossman the same gentleman who managed Bob Dylan.  He plays guitar, piano, drums and percussion and still does abbreviated tours, prior to covid that is, even at age 82. 

Stay safe and well...and please keep off Lake Superior in November.

The legend lives on from the Chippewa on down

Of the big lake they called Gitche Gumee

The lake, it is said, never gives up her dead

When the skies of November turn gloomy

With a load of iron ore twenty-six thousand tons more

Than the Edmund Fitzgerald weighed empty

That good ship and true was a bone to be chewed

When the gales of November came early

 

The ship was the pride of the American side

Coming back from some mill in Wisconsin

As the big freighters go, it was bigger than most

With a crew and good captain well seasoned

Concluding some terms with a couple of steel firms

When they left fully loaded for Cleveland

And later that night when the ship's bell rang

Could it be the north wind they'd been feelin'?

 

The wind in the wires made a tattle-tale sound

And a wave broke over the railing

And every man knew, as the captain did too

T'was the witch of November come stealin'

The dawn came late and the breakfast had to wait

When the gales of November came slashin'

When afternoon came it was freezin' rain

In the face of a hurricane west wind

 

When suppertime came, the old cook came on deck sayin'

"Fellas, it's too rough to feed ya"

At seven PM, a main hatchway caved in, he said

"Fellas, it's been good to know ya"

The captain wired in he had water comin' in

And the good ship and crew was in peril

And later that night when his lights went outta sight

Came the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald

 

Does any one know where the love of God goes

When the waves turn the minutes to hours?

The searchers all say they'd have made Whitefish Bay

If they'd put fifteen more miles behind her

They might have split up or they might have capsized

They may have broke deep and took water

And all that remains is the faces and the names

Of the wives and the sons and the daughters

 

Lake Huron rolls, Superior sings

In the rooms of her ice-water mansion

Old Michigan steams like a young man's dreams

The islands and bays are for sportsmen

And farther below Lake Ontario

Takes in what Lake Erie can send her

And the iron boats go as the mariners all know

With the gales of November remembered

 

In a musty old hall in Detroit they prayed

In the maritime sailors' cathedral

The church bell chimed 'til it rang twenty-nine times

For each man on the Edmund Fitzgerald

The legend lives on from the Chippewa on down

Of the big lake they called Gitche Gumee

Superior, they said, never gives up her dead

When the gales of November come early