Gordon Lightfoot, mournful Canadian singer-songwriter, dies at 84
Gordon Lightfoot, the Canadian singer-songwriter whose graceful and literate songwriting made him one of the most respected folk-rooted musicians to emerge in the 1960s, died on Monday. He was 84.
His publicist, Victoria Lord, confirmed his death to the CBC. A cause of death was not given.
Lightfoot had recently canceled his 2023 tour dates due to undisclosed health issues.
Along with Joni Mitchell and Neil Young, Lightfoot is regarded as one of the most important Canadian pop musicians of the ’60s and ‘70s, best known in the States for his mournful hits “If You Could Read My Mind,” “Sundown” and “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.”
The latter song, which reached No. 2 in Billboard in 1976, told the true story of an ore freighter that sank in a storm in Lake Superior a year earlier, claiming the lives of all 29 crew members. It was
