She said her brother has received several letters from family members, all expressing pleasure over the song. "He decided to write the song in memory of the families left behind." "He felt very badly when The Edmund Fitzgerald went down," she continued. "He's had his eye on the big vessels for years. "We grew up in Orillia, Ont., which is right near Georgian Bay," she said. Lightfoot has been fascinated by the Great Lakes for years, according to his sister and office manager, Bev Lightfoot of Toronto. Old Michigan steams like a young man's dreams Just one week before he went down with the Edmund Fitzgerald, he sent his wife a postcard. Rafferty, a 44-year-veteran of Great Lakes waters, had signed on the big freighter only three weeks before the tragedy. The "old cook" of the Fitzgerald was Robert Rafferty, 62, of Toledo. He said "Fellas it's been good to know ya" Sayin' "Fellas it's too rough to feed ya" When suppertime came the old cook came on deck At that moment, radio contact was lost, and the Edmund Fitzgerald disappeared from the other ship's radar screen. McSorley calmly said he was sure his pumps could handle any excess water, although waves as high as 30 feet were hammering the ship as it headed for (the relative safety of) Whitefish Bay. More: This week in Michigan history: Edmund Fitzgerald sinks that evening that his ship was taking water through two hatches. The vessel's captain, Ernest McSorley, 63, a veteran skipper with more than 40 years of experience on the Great Lakes, radioed to a nearby ship around 7 p.m. The 729-foot freighter simply disappeared from the radar screen of a nearby vessel, after battling 25-foot waves and 80-mile-an-hour winds on Lake Superior about 60 miles northwest of Sault Ste. The Edmund Fitzgerald was lost in similar fashion last Nov. Five of the ships simply vanished without a trace. In November 1913, for example, a savage five-day story sent 12 ships to the bottom and killed 248 men. The turning of the seasons can generate fierce storms, and the worst disasters in Great Lakes history have occurred in that month. November is the crudest month on the Great Lakes. The wind in the wires made a tattletale soundĪnd every man knew as the captain did too The album, ironically, is entitled "Summertime Dream."īut there is no hint of summer in the moody strains of the "Edmund Fitzgerald." The lyrics are funeral the beat is heavily syncopated, recalling the pitch and roll of a great ship in heavy water. Garland said the song was "in the top five" in requests each day at CKLW, and that the single went from 14th to seventh in sales in the Detroit area last week. Les Garland, program director for CKLW radio in Windsor, says the song is being played an average of once every three hours on his station, a frequency that only the biggest hits receive. It has caught on in New York, Boston and Houston and is starting to be played on West Coast stations. The appeal of the song is not limited to the Midwest. "So we decided to release it as a single two weeks ago, and it's now our hottest single." "The whole thing caught us by surprise," he added. More: Gordon Lightfoot, 'Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald' singer, dies at 84 1 in Great Lakes cities," says Bob Merlis, of Warner Brothers Records. "Because of this one tune, the album it's on is No. The song is "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald," Canadian folksinger Gordon Lightfoot's tribute to the giant freighter that went down in Lake Superior last November with all 29 hands lost. But in Detroit and other Great Lakes cities, it's now one of the top records on AM radio. The song is long and moody, an unlikely hit in the highly competitive world of popular music. The lake it is said never gives up her dead The legend lives on from the Chippewa on down This story appeared on page three of the Free Press on Sept. Editor's note: Gordon Lightfoot’s 1976 megahit, “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald,” held a special resonance in Detroit.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |