, the Canadian folk music laureate who crossed over to major pop fame in the U.S. during the ‘70s, died Monday evening at Sunnybrook Hospital in Toronto. He was 84 years old. Lightfoot rose to prominence in the mid-‘60s, penning such folk standards as “Early Morning Rain” , “For Loving Me” and “Ribbon of Darkness,” as well as the ambitious “Canadian Railroad Trilogy,” a sort of Northern equivalent to Mickey Newbury’s “American Trilogy.
Though Lightfoot remained a bigger star at home , he maintained a high profile stateside throughout the ‘70s. His 1974 album “Sundown” — which contained the ominous title single and the upbeat “Carefree Highway” – topped the charts in both countries. The maritime disaster ballad “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” hit No. 2 in the U.S. in 1976.
“Every time I hear a song of his, it’s like I wish it would last forever,” Dylan wrote in the liner notes to his 1985 career anthology “Biograph.” Facial paralysis from Bell’s palsy sidelined Lightfoot in the early ‘70s. A serious problem with alcohol led him to quit drinking in 1982 , and he remained abstemious for more than 30 years. In 2002, a ruptured abdominal aneurysm led to a six-week coma, extended hospitalization and further surgery, but by 2004 he had completed a new album. A minor stroke in 2006 led him unable to play the guitar for the better part of a year, but he returned to the instrument on stage.
Though a promising high school athlete, Lightfoot focused increasingly on music in his teens. At 20, after studying music at the University of Toronto, he moved to Los Angeles, where he studied jazz composition. However, after two years he returned to Toronto. In the early ‘60s, his interest in folk music deepened. He performed in both urban folk ensembles and as a soloist in Toronto’s coffee houses. He briefly resided in England, where he hosted a BBC country music telecast.
Things changed when he decamped for Reprise, America’s most progressive label of the late ‘60s and early ‘70s. His first album – which mated him with such hip roster mates as Ry Cooder, Van Dyke Parks, Randy Newman and John Sebastian – lifted off with the top-five “If You Could Read My Mind,” which firmly established Lightfoot in the top rank of singer-songwriters.