50 years ago today, the Great Lakes ore carrier, SS Edmund Fitzgerald, embarked on its final voyage. Tomorrow will be the anniversary of the great ship slipping beneath the waves of “gichi-gami.” Here
A number of memorials are scheduled for Monday; many are sold out. Here
What happened and what they think might have happened to the great ship. Watch
Please, just don’t play that song. For the love of God man.
Sorry Brad. I play it a couple times each year. Lake Superior holds a special place in my heart. And I love Gordon Lightfoot’s work.
I graduated from high school just 20 miles from Duluth the year before. That was a major big story there. And I can’t stand that song! If I never hear it again it will be too soon.
In fact I can’t listen to Gordon Lightfoot without hearing that song. They played that song to death in Duluth area radio stations.
https://youtu.be/u0Lg9HygEJc?si=IqNzAHh56d2ruItx
Bad_Brad: “Please, just don’t play that song. For the love of God man.”
joe6pak: “I can’t stand that song! If I never hear it again it will be too soon.”
Mrs radiomattm: “I frickin HATE that song!”
Thanks you lads!
Mrs radiomattm
LOL, virtual high five.
Say what you will about that TUNE but Gord immortalized what would have been FORGOTTEN by HISTORY on BOTH SIDES.
Cheers!
I’m Driving it through my LEXINGTON KENTUCKY made speakers with 2 400 Watt Canadian Monoblock amps and a Cali made VTL vacuum tube pre-amp as you read this.
^^^^^ Bro, that song, if you want to call it that, is like some sort of Celtic chant with a close pin over his nose. It sucks.
The 3 Gords:
Gordie Howe
Gordon Lightfoot
Gordie Downie
FWIW:
Elvis sang Lightfoot’s “In the Early Morning Rain”
Sundown, carefree highway, If you could read my mind, etc.
HEATHENS!!!
Cheers.
Used to see that boat a lot in the summers of my youth while swimming in the St. Clair river.
I even have slides of her first passing on same said river as it being the largest ship up to that time had everyone lining the shore to watch it and Mom took some great pics.
@Tim from my reading it seemed one of the captains, Peter Pulcer, would blast tunes for the shoreline crowds as she made her passage between lakes. It was a different captain, Earnst McSorley that went down with the ship.
I also don’t really enjoy Lightfoot’s ode, it used to put a chill up my spine when I was a kid, now the lyrics make me cringe.
The Fitzgerald is well remembered in this region and would have been without Gord’s gold.
Grand prize winner, most boring and repetitious song EVER. Hands down.
(No disrespect meant to the ship and/or crew, but it’s the truth.)
The wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald by Gordon Lightfoot was played to death on the radio where it has become a gigantic annoying earworm. I prefer his Canadian railroad trilogy, sit down young stranger, Don Quixote as some of my favorite Gordon Lightfoot songs.
MacArthur Park by Richard Harris is more annoying as well as anything by Bobby Goldsboro. And Harper Valley PTA a song which I truly hate.
All of that aside, Lake Superior is a very impressive body of water, with many beautiful locations along its shores. The circumnavigation via car is one of the great and unique road trips in North America.
I owned a bar back in the 80’s with a jukebox. Elvira was the hit at the time. I got so damned sick and tired of hearing that song that one night, with the bar full, I opened the jukebox, pulled out the record and broke it into pieces. I hate that song and still do. Sorry, a bit OT.
That’s even better than when my brother and another roommate took my copy of Roller maidens from outer space which they hated out into the street in front of the guy’s house where we lived, took out their CO2 pellet guns and blew it to pieces like they were shooting skeet. A friend of mine brought one of his son’s vulgar rap CDs to work one time back in the early 90’s and took it out back of our shop and proceeded to destroy it with a hammer with all of the fathers and other employees cheering him on
I never liked the Lightfoot song either. Too overwrought. Too bad a more subtle artist like Paul McCarteny never sang about it Probably would have sound like this …
Now somewhere in the deep water manse of Superior there lies the hull of
The Edmund FitzGerald
Cause one day her Captain steamed out From the Western Shore
With 26,000 tons of ore
Old Witch didn’t like that
Said, “I’m gonna sink that scow”
So one day she whipped up a mini typhoon
Sent the ol Fitz to her doom
Living in Michigan, I was forced to listen to that song more times than I can remember. But to hear it today, it does bring back the sadness of that day more than any other remembrance. Just the first line, and I’m back to that sad day. I had relatives that lived in the UP at the time and knew some of the sailors who perished.