ON THIS DAY IN MUSIC HISTORY: November 10th 1975; The SS Edmund Fitzgerald sinks suddenly in Lake Superior during a storm, killing all 29 men aboard and inspiring Canadian folkie Gordon Lightfoot to write a song about the tragedy, Wreck Of The Edmund Fitzgerald. The song was on his 1976 album Summertime Dream. It would peak at No2 in the US and No40 in the UK. This is a factual retelling of a shipwreck on Lake Superior in November, 1975 that claimed the lives of 29 crew members. She was loaded with 26,116 tons of taconite pellets at the Burlington Northern Railroad, Dock #1. Her destination was Zug Island on the Detroit River. In the US, this was held out of the No1 spot by Rod Stewarts Tonights The Night. This was nominated for the Song Of The Year Grammy, but it was beaten by Barry Manilows I Write The Songs. In 1970, baseball commissioner Bud Seligs co-founding partner in the Brewers was fellow Milwaukee businessman Edmund B. Fitzgerald, a patron of Milwaukee arts and civic projects, and the son of a family that owned Great Lakes shipyards. In 1958, the freighter SS Edmund Fitzgerald was named for Edmund B.s father. An initial investigation suggested that the crew was partly to blame for the disaster by not securing the ships hatches. Lightfoots song reflected the original findings in the verse, …at 7 p.m. a main hatchway gave in. However, in 2010 a Canadian documentary claimed to have proven the crew of the ship was not responsible for the tragedy. Says Lightfoot, The Edmund Fitzgerald really seemed to go unnoticed at that time, and I felt I would like to expand upon the story of the sinking of the ship itself, he said. And it was quite an undertaking to do that, I went and bought all of the old newspapers, got everything in chronological order, and went ahead and did it because I already had a melody in my mind and it was from an old Irish dirge that I heard when I was about three and a half years old. Lightfoot wrote the lyrics after coming up with the melody and chords. He recalled: When the story came on television, that the Edmund had foundered in Lake Superior three hours earlier, it was right on the CBC here in Canada, I came into the kitchen for a cup of coffee and saw the news and I said Thats my story to go with the melody and the chords. Here is the story of The Wreck Of The Edmund Fitzgerald by Gordon Lightfoot. ....Enjoy!
Posted on: Mon, 10 Nov 2014 20:12:14 +0000
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