"The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" is a 1976 hit song written, composed and performed by the Canadian singer-songwriter Gordon Lightfoot to memorialize the sinking of the bulk carrier SS Edmund Fitzgerald in Lake Superior on November 10, 1975. Lightfoot considered this song to be his finest work.[2]
Appearing originally on his 1976 album Summertime Dream, Lightfoot re-recorded the song in 1988 for the compilation album Gord's Gold, Vol. 2.
Lyrics
The song chronicles the final voyage of the Edmund Fitzgerald as it succumbed to a massive late-season storm and sank in Lake Superior with the loss of all 29 crewmen. Lightfoot drew inspiration from news reports he gathered in the immediate aftermath, particularly "The Cruelest Month", published in Newsweek magazine's November 24, 1975 issue.[3] Lightfoot's passion for recreational sailing on the Great Lakes[4] informs his ballad's verses throughout.
Recorded before the ship's wreckage could be examined, the song contains some artistic conjectures, omissions and paraphrases. In later interviews, Lightfoot recounted how he had agonized over possible inaccuracies while trying to pen the lyrics until his lead guitarist Terry Clements convinced him to do what Clements' favourite author Mark Twain would have advised: just tell a story.[5] Deviations from the facts of the tragedy include:
According to the song, Edmund Fitzgerald was bound "fully loaded for Cleveland." In fact, the ship was heading for Zug Island near Detroit, where it was set to discharge its cargo of taconite iron ore pellets before heading on to its home port of Cleveland for the winter.[6]
The Edmund Fitzgerald was not "coming back from some mill in Wisconsin." Lake freighters that carry bulk iron ore are loaded at ore docks, not mills.[7]
Capt. Ernest McSorley had stated in his last radio transmission before the ship sank that he and the crew were "holding our own," not that they had "water coming in," although he did communicate several hours earlier that the ship was taking on water.[8]
The song mentions possible causes of sinking, and while there is still debate about the cause, exploration of the wreckage found the bow and stern relatively close to each other on the lakebed floor, ruling out that it "might have split up."[9] However, this exploration took place a significant amount of time after the writing of the song.
In a later live recording, Lightfoot recounts that a parishioner of the church informed him that the church is not "musty." From that time on, instead of singing "In a musty old hall..." he sang "In a rustic old hall..."[11]
In March 2010, Lightfoot changed a line during live performances to reflect new findings that there had been no crew error involved in the sinking. The line originally read, "At 7 p.m. a main hatchway caved in; he said..."; Lightfoot began singing it as "At 7 p.m. it grew dark, it was then he said...." Lightfoot learned about the new research when contacted for permission to use his song for a History Channel documentary that aired on March 31, 2010. Lightfoot stated that he had no intention of changing the original copyrighted lyrics; instead, from then on, he simply sang the new words during live performances.[12]
SS Edmund Fitzgerald (1971)
Production
The song was recorded in December 1975 at Eastern Sound,[13] a recording studio composed of two Victorian houses at 48 Yorkville Avenue in a then-hippie district of downtown Toronto. The famous studio, which also recorded Rush, Cat Stevens, Bruce Springsteen, Elton John and Jimi Hendrix, was later torn down and replaced by a parking lot.[14]
Pee Wee Charles and Terry Clements came up with "the haunting guitar and steel riffs" on a "second take" during the evening session.[15]
Lightfoot cleared the studio and killed all the lights save the one illuminating his parchment of scribbled words when recording his vocal part.[16]
The song was the first commercial digital multitrack recording on the 3M 32-track digital recorder — a prototype technology at the time.[17]
Chart success
Lightfoot's single version hit number 1 in his native Canada (in the RPM national singles survey) on November 20, 1976, barely a year after the disaster.[18] In the United States, it reached number 1 in Cashbox and number 2 for two weeks in the BillboardHot 100 (behind Rod Stewart's "Tonight's the Night"), making it Lightfoot's second-most successful single, behind only "Sundown". Overseas it was at best a minor hit, peaking at number 40 in the UK Singles Chart.[19]
^Person, James (January 1, 1998). "Gordon Lightfoot". In Knopper, Steve (ed.). MusicHound Lounge: The Essential Album Guide. Detroit: Visible Ink Press. p. 294.
Rauch, Alan (June 2023). "'Fellas, it's Been Good to Know You': Gordon Lightfoot's Edmund Fitzgerald". The Newsletter of the Charlotte Folk Society. 28 (6): 4.
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