Gordon Lightfoot - PBS Soundstage, WTTW Studios, Chicago, IL, 9-8-1979

Here's another episode of the excellent "PBS Soundstage" TV show. This is another episode starring Gordon Lightfoot. I say "another" because he also performed for the show in 1973. I've posted that album here already.

This album caught Lightfoot halfway between the release on his "Endless Wire" album in early 1978 and "Dream Street Rose," which would be released in 1980. He played two songs from each. Otherwise, this mostly consists of his classics from previous albums.

Two of the songs have edits to them. I edited track 12, a talk track, because it contained an interview. I cut that out, since it wasn't part of the concert. But I kept a section between songs there where he introduced the members of his band. The other edited track is the last one, "Canadian Railroad Trilogy." Unfortunately, that's a long song, and the episode ended after only three minutes of it. So I found a different bootleg soundboard version from the time period, and used that to patch in the last four minutes. That's why those two tracks have "[Edit]" in their titles.

This album is 59 minutes long. 

01 Cotton Jenny (Gordon Lightfoot)
02 The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald (Gordon Lightfoot)
03 Endless Wire (Gordon Lightfoot)
04 Summertime Dream (Gordon Lightfoot)
05 talk (Gordon Lightfoot)
06 Don Quixote (Gordon Lightfoot)
07 If You Could Read My Mind (Gordon Lightfoot)
08 Ghosts of Cape Horn (Gordon Lightfoot)
09 Beautiful (Gordon Lightfoot)
10 Hangdog Hotel Room (Gordon Lightfoot)
11 Sundown (Gordon Lightfoot)
12 talk [Edit] (Gordon Lightfoot)
13 Early Morning Rain (Gordon Lightfoot)
14 Whisper My Name (Gordon Lightfoot)
15 On the TV (Gordon Lightfoot)
16 Old Dan's Records (Gordon Lightfoot)
17 talk (Gordon Lightfoot)
18 Canadian Railroad Trilogy [Edit] (Gordon Lightfoot)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/a9ij6YWw

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/m7ic8ZlRKUWfuiR/file

The cover image is a screenshot taken from this exact concert. 

Gordon Lightfoot - PBS Soundstage, WTTW Studios, Chicago, IL, 3-1973

I'm pretty psyched to have recently discovered lots of great concerts from the "PBS Soundstage" TV show. So expect to see more posts using that as a source in the near future, while I still pursue my big BBC project. Here's the earliest Soundstage concert I could find, Gordon Lightfoot from 1973.

Technically speaking, the show this unreleased concert was from was called "Made in Chicago," not "PBS Soundstage." The show began in 1972 at the PBS station WTTW in Chicago. It was unique at the time to feature only one or two musical acts for an entire hour. But at first it was of local interest only, and wasn't able to book big names. From the first two years, the only interesting concerts I could find were this one and one from Jim Croce. But the show was popular, so in 1974 it changed its name to "PBS Soundstage," and was shown on PBS stations all over the country, lasting all the way to 2018 (though with some significant gaps). So for consistency's sake, I'm using the Soundstage name here, since it was the same show, and so people can more easily find all the ones I post.

Lightfoot's commercial and critical prime was from the late 1960s to the mid-1970s. But there aren't many live recordings from this years with excellent sound quality such as this one. So I hope by posting this, it can help give it more exposure. Lightfoot had been slowly building up a following, but he never had any hits outside of his home country of Canada until "If You Could Read My Mind" in 1970. It reached Number Five in the U.S. singles chart and was an instant classic, covered hundreds of times. From that time until the time of this concert, he didn't have any more big hits (outside of Canada, at least), but he had a series of little hits. His more recent album was "Old Dan's Records." A year later, he would have his biggest hit of all with "Sundown."

This album is 51 minutes long.

01 The Patriot's Dream (Gordon Lightfoot)
02 Don Quixote (Gordon Lightfoot)
03 Affair on 8th Avenue (Gordon Lightfoot)
04 talk (Gordon Lightfoot)
05 If You Could Read My Mind (Gordon Lightfoot)
06 It's Worth Believing (Gordon Lightfoot)
07 You Are What I Am (Gordon Lightfoot)
08 Beautiful (Gordon Lightfoot)
09 Sit Down Young Stranger (Gordon Lightfoot)
10 Ten Degrees and Getting Colder (Gordon Lightfoot)
11 Softly (Gordon Lightfoot)
12 Boss Man (Gordon Lightfoot)
13 talk (Gordon Lightfoot)
14 Early Morning Rain (Gordon Lightfoot)
15 Can't Depend on Love (Gordon Lightfoot)
16 Cotton Jenny (Gordon Lightfoot)
17 Old Dan's Records (Gordon Lightfoot)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/iEVi2dXE

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/xtckmSyRiFL0yQt/file

The cover photo is from a concert at the Royal Albert Hall, in London, some time in 1973.

Gordon Lightfoot - The Skip Weshner Show, KRHM Radio Studio, Los Angeles, CA, 1968-1970

Sadly, famous musician keep dying. Earlier today, I posted an album to mark the recent death of Burt Bacharach. Two days ago (as I write this in May 2023), Canadian singer-songwiter Gordon Lightfoot passed away at the age of 84.

I wanted to post something from him to pay tribute to his musical legacy. I looked around at what is out there that I hadn't posted yet, and came up with this. 

There's a bootleg that's been circulating for many years of Lightfoot performing for the Skip Weshner Show, a radio show in Los Angeles. Unfortunately, in my opinion, most of this isn't very good. A lot of it consists of Lightfoot talking with the DJ Skip Weshner, which doesn't have much relistening value, especially since the DJ did most of the talking. There's also a big chunk of it that apparently took place at a party at Weshner's house. Most of that was unintelligible crowd noise. When Lightfoot did play some music, it tended to be songs that only lasted a minute or less, and were marred by party sounds. Some other sounds just had poor sound quality.

That said, there were some real gems in there too. I trimmed away most of the bootleg, cutting it down to just the full songs done with excellent sound quality. Most of these come from in-person acoustic performances on Weshner's show, with only a couple of songs from the party. The mix was way off, but I did some audio editing to improve that. One song, "The Seabird Song," appears to get cut off before it finished.

Additionally, there are a few songs come from an unknown radio show. Again it's acoustic, though Lightfoot it sounds like is backed by a bassist and second guitarist. I have no idea where these are from. If anyone knows, please tell me. However, based on the song selection, it's highly likely it comes from 1970.

There is one bonus song, "Your Song," the classic hit by Elton John. This is a real treat, since there's no official recording of Lightfoot doing this. Unfortunately though, the sound quality is significantly worse than the others, so I had to relegate it to bonus track status. It also is not complete. However, in this case, I'm guessing he stopped because that's as much of the song as he could remember.

This album is 46 minutes long, not including the bonus track.

01 Bitter Green (Gordon Lightfoot)
02 Take It or Leave It (Gordon Lightfoot)
03 Pleasures of the Night (Gordon Lightfoot)
04 The Auctioneer (Gordon Lightfoot)
05 Minstrel of the Dawn (Gordon Lightfoot)
06 Looking at the Rain (Gordon Lightfoot)
07 Sit Down Young Stranger (Gordon Lightfoot)
08 Cobwebs and Dust (Gordon Lightfoot)
09 Me and Bobby McGee (Gordon Lightfoot)
10 The Last Time I Saw Her (Gordon Lightfoot)
11 The Seabird Song (Gordon Lightfoot)
12 Talking in Your Sleep (Gordon Lightfoot)
13 If You Could Read My Mind (Gordon Lightfoot)
14 Approaching Lavender (Gordon Lightfoot)

Your Song (Gordon Lightfoot)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15193717/GordnLft_1968-1970_SkipWeshnrShowKRHMLosAnglesCA__19681970_atse.zip.html

The cover is a photo of Lightfoot in concert in 1971. I didn't see any really good photos from 1970. The lettering of his name at the top comes from one of his albums. 

Gordon Lightfoot - Fillmore West, San Francisco, CA, 10-5-1968

I wasn't planning on posting any more of Gordon Lightfoot's music. I like his stuff, but to be honest only in limited doses. However, I stumbled across this by accident the other day, and the quality is so good for 1968 that I couldn't resist sharing it. The sound quality is phenomenal for the era - as good or better than most official live albums from that time. And the performance is solid too. Lightfoot is backed by a second guitarist (Red Shea) and bassist (John Stockfish), but their contributions are subtle - it's basically him in solo acoustic mode. 

Because this was is such great quality already, I didn't have to do anything other than put some of his banter between songs onto separate tracks. He didn't talk much in any case, other than telling a weird joke near the end.

Apparently, this was recorded by Bill Graham, who owned the venue. He played it on a radio station a couple of years later, which is how it got to the public. It's a crying shame this hasn't been officially released. I think it's better than his official live album from 1969. 

This album is 58 minutes long.

01 I'm Not Sayin' (Gordon Lightfoot)
02 talk (Gordon Lightfoot)
03 If I Could (Gordon Lightfoot)
04 Softly (Gordon Lightfoot)
05 Boss Man (Gordon Lightfoot)
06 Black Day in July (Gordon Lightfoot)
07 Cold Hands from New York (Gordon Lightfoot)
08 Walls (Gordon Lightfoot)
09 Affair on 8th Avenue (Gordon Lightfoot)
10 talk (Gordon Lightfoot)
11 Steel Rail Blues (Gordon Lightfoot)
12 talk (Gordon Lightfoot)
13 Long Thin Dawn (Gordon Lightfoot)
14 Rosanna (Gordon Lightfoot)
15 Mountain and Marian (Gordon Lightfoot)
16 Early Morning Rain (Gordon Lightfoot)
17 The Auctioneer (Gordon Lightfoot)
18 Unsettled Ways (Gordon Lightfoot)
19 talk (Gordon Lightfoot)
20 Pussywillows, Cat-Tails (Gordon Lightfoot)
21 Canadian Railroad Trilogy (Gordon Lightfoot)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15429921/GordnLft_1968_FillmorWestSnFrancscoCA__10-5-1968_atse.zip.html

The cover photo comes from a concert in Vancouver, Canada, in 1968.

Gordon Lightfoot - Seattle Opera House, Seattle, WA, 5-16-1974

First off, I have to point out that I've only posted two Gordon Lightfoot albums here so far, both of them concerts, but weirdly, I recently found reasons to change the titles of both of them. In one case, a 1966 concert, I discovered I got the venue wrong. In the other case, a 1971 concert, I hadn't known the exact date, and I recently found out what that was. So I've changed the cover art and mp3 tags and such for both of those. If that kind of thing matters to you, you might want to re-download them.

Moving on to this concert, Lightfoot's popularity peaked in the mid-1970s, with some big singles and hit albums. However, he never capitalized on that to release a live album around then. Even now, there is only one official live album of his from his peak 1960s and 1970s decades, which was recorded in early 1969.

So I thought another live album from the mid-1970s was nice. It turns out there are very few widely circulating bootlegs by him, in part no doubt because there are very few recorded with excellent sound. I figure the most popular is a soundboard recorded in Montreux, Switzerland, in 1976. But I'm not a big fan of that one because it was recorded with a full band, and their arrangements don't sound that different from the album versions.

I recently came across this one, and I like it a lot better. Technically, it's not a soundboard. But it's an excellent audience recording that sounds as good as a large percentage of soundboards. However, what I like most about it is that he performed in a more stripped down format, with just a lead guitarist and bassist accompanying him. The lack of drums and strings and other instruments means you get significantly different versions of many songs. Plus, the fact that it was recorded in 1974 means you get most of his 1970s hits, including one of his biggest, "Sundown."

While the sound quality was generally very good, something about it seemed a bit off. I guessed the bass was too prominent. So I shared it with my musical friend MZ, who is better at that sort of thing. He agreed with me about the bass problem, and improved the equalization to take care of that. It sounds significantly better now.

Lightfoot actually performed two concerts on this date, an early one and a late one. The bootleg includes all of both. There was a lot of repetition, so I've decided to base this on the early show, since it sounded a little better, and was one song longer. But I've added the five songs at the end that were only played at the late concert. So you get the best of both.

If you only count the early show, the concert is an hour and three minutes long. But with the extra late show songs added at the end, the total is an hour and 21 minutes.

01 High and Dry (Gordon Lightfoot)
02 Tennessee Stud (Gordon Lightfoot)
03 Sundown (Gordon Lightfoot)
04 Seven Island Suite (Gordon Lightfoot)
05 Alberta Bound (Gordon Lightfoot)
06 talk (Gordon Lightfoot)
07 Don Quixote (Gordon Lightfoot)
08 Christian Island (Gordon Lightfoot)
09 It's Worth Believin' (Gordon Lightfoot)
10 talk (Gordon Lightfoot)
11 Beautiful (Gordon Lightfoot)
12 Partners (Gordon Lightfoot)
13 talk (Gordon Lightfoot)
14 The Auctioneer (Gordon Lightfoot)
15 talk (Gordon Lightfoot)
16 Divorce Country Style (Gordon Lightfoot)
17 talk (Gordon Lightfoot)
18 If You Could Read My Mind (Gordon Lightfoot)
19 talk (Gordon Lightfoot)
20 Cold on the Shoulder (Gordon Lightfoot)
21 Canadian Railroad Trilogy (Gordon Lightfoot)
22 talk (Gordon Lightfoot)
23 Too Late for Prayin' (Gordon Lightfoot)
24 Wherefore and Why (Gordon Lightfoot)
25 Affair on Eighth Avenue (Gordon Lightfoot)
26 Cotton Jenny (Gordon Lightfoot)
27 Sit Down Young Stranger (Gordon Lightfoot)
28 The Pony Man (Gordon Lightfoot)
29 Carefree Highway (Gordon Lightfoot)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16693266/GORDNLGHTFT1974_SettlOpraHuse__5-16-1974_atse.zip.html

I couldn't find any photos from this exact show. However, I found one from 1974, taken from his appearance on "The Midnight Special" TV show.

Gordon Lightfoot - Cafe Le Hibou, Ottawa, Canada, 1-27-1966

I have to admit that I'm not a big Gordon Lightfoot fan. When he's on, such as with a song like "If You Could Read My Mind" or "Early Morning Rain," he's amazing. And he has a lot of those songs. But I don't listen to his albums all the way through, since he has even more filler.

That said, I've posted a live album from him, and now I'm posting another, because I think they're exceptional. Here's the link to the previous one I posted, which dates to 1971:

https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2018/05/gordon-lightfoot-in-concert-1971.html

If you've been following this blog, you're probably noticed by now that I have a particular fondness for acoustic guitar performances. That 1971 concert I just linked to is an acoustic one, and this one is too.

But I think this one is even more remarkable than that one, due to a combination of its date and its sound quality. This concert is from the very start of 1966. There are very few bootlegs of any kind going that far back, and the ones that exist usually have poor sound. Yet this recording is a really fantastic sounding soundboard recording! Furthermore, I've added some bonus tracks from another concert in 1965, and that also is a really nice soundboard recording too.

That is particularly surprising because Lightfoot's musical career was just getting off the ground at the time. His first album "Lightfoot!" came out in January 1966, the exact same month as this recording. He'd been playing concerts and recording singles for years prior to that, but it wasn't until he released his first album when his popularity and reputation slowly grew. Thus, he wasn't very well known, and this concert had him playing in a small club. (For the 1965 bonus tracks, that's even more the case. You can hear from the applause that he played to a much smaller crowd.)

I like this concert a lot, even though I'm not a big Gordon Lightfoot fan, for a number of reasons. For one, I think his first album is his strongest album. That means he had a lot of excellent songs to play, even though it was still early in his career. For another, he had a lot of entertaining between song banter. It reminds me a lot of the four Joni Mitchell concerts from 1967 and 1968 I've posted here recently, where she talked before every song.

A third factor is that Lightfoot played some songs here that didn't appear on any of his albums, and they're really good too. Including the bonus tracks from the 1965 concert, the songs "Let's Get Together," Turn, Turn, Turn," "Old Blue, and "The Auctioneer" either were never released on album by him, or were only released much later.

Of course, "Turn, Turn, Turn" was a number one hit for the Byrds in 1965. But note that the 1965 concert this comes from took place months before that Byrds version was released. The song was well known already in folk music circles, because it had been written and performed by Pete Seeger, so Lightfoot's version is based on that and has nothing to do with the Byrds version.

Speaking of those Joni Mitchell concerts I mentioned above, I had a lot of trouble figuring out exactly when and where those were recorded. Turns out I had the same problem here. The bootleg I found claimed the show was from Ottawa, Canada, but didn't mention the specific venue. Other versions of this same bootleg claim it took place at the Riverboat in Toronto, Canada. When I first posted this, I decided that it probably took place at the Riverboat, mostly due to a reference that Lightfoot played at the Riverboat in Toronto on January 18, 1966, and continued to play there for the next two weeks. That means it was highly likely he was still playing there on January 27th.

However, I have since changed my mind, and changed the location to Ottawa. That's due to some comments he made at the start of the song "Piddling Pete," in which he mentioned both Ottawa and Toronto for the setting of the song. One could argue for either location based on those mentions alone. However, a commenter later mentioned that he also referred to Bell's Corners at the start of that song, which is the name of a specific Ottawa neighborhood. That's someone one would assume an Ottawa crowd would know, not a Toronto crowd. 

The location is still not 100 percent certain, but I found newspaper references that for the first few years of his career, before he hit it big, he always played in the Cafe Le Hibou in Ottawa. So I'm going with that until and unless something better comes along.

Regarding those 1965 bonus tracks, as I mentioned above, they come from a concert in mid-1965 that is also a great soundboard recording. (Specifically, it took place at La Cave, in Cleveland, Ohio, on May 8, 1965.) But I don't like that concert nearly as much, due to the fact that the recording quickly faded in and out and the starts and ends of the songs, cutting out nearly all of the talking between songs. Plus, there was a lot of overlap between the songs played in the 1966 concert and the 1965 one. So instead of presenting it in full, I've only included the interesting songs that aren't repeats of any of the songs from the 1966 show. Between the two concerts, one gets most of the really good songs Lightfoot had come up with by that point in his career. (In case you don't look at the mp3 tags, the 1965 concert goes from "Let's Get Together" until the end.)

The 1966 concert is fairly short, at only 38 minutes. But it's almost certainly complete. In fact, he mentioned towards the end how the time for his set was running out. Given that he wasn't a big star at the time, playing 30 minutes in a folk club as part of a bill with other artists on it seems to have been par for the course. The same thing happened to Joni Mitchell, for instance. (And, as a fellow Canadian, she played at the same venue a lot in the same time period.) The bonus tracks from the 1965 concert add another 20 minutes to make it a fuller listening experience.

As usual, I'm probably way too verbose with these write-ups. But the bottom line is, this is a great performance with great sound quality, and it's a real treasure to have such a recording all the way from the start of 1966. Even if you're like me and you're not a big Lightfoot fan, this is a very solid album that definitely deserves to be released. In fact, I like it more than any of his official albums.

01 Early Morning Rain (Gordon Lightfoot)
02 I'm Not Sayin' (Gordon Lightfoot)
03 talk (Gordon Lightfoot)
04 Changes (Gordon Lightfoot)
05 talk (Gordon Lightfoot)
06 Piddling Pete (Gordon Lightfoot)
07 talk (Gordon Lightfoot)
08 Ballad of Yarmouth Castle (Gordon Lightfoot)
09 talk (Gordon Lightfoot)
10 If You Got It (Gordon Lightfoot)
11 talk (Gordon Lightfoot)
12 The Auctioneer (Gordon Lightfoot)
13 talk (Gordon Lightfoot)
14 Echoes of Heroes (Gordon Lightfoot)
15 talk (Gordon Lightfoot)
16 Old Blue (Gordon Lightfoot)
17 Let's Get Together (Gordon Lightfoot)
18 Turn, Turn, Turn [To Everything There Is a Season] (Gordon Lightfoot)
19 Ribbon of Darkness (Gordon Lightfoot)
20 The Way I Feel (Gordon Lightfoot)
21 Steel Rail Blues (Gordon Lightfoot)
22 For Lovin' Me (Gordon Lightfoot)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16693248/GORDNLGHTFT1966_CfeLeHibouOttwaCnada__1-27-1966_atse.zip.html

The photo I chose for the cover art was taken at the Riverboat in Toronto, Canada. It comes from January 1967, not January 1966. So it's not a perfect match for place or time, but it's in the right ballpark for both. If Lightfoot was wearing a suit in 1967, as he is in the photo, then he almost certainly dressed and looked just like that in 1966 as well.

I hate using black and white instead of color for my album covers, so some months after I first posted this album, I colorized the photo.

Gordon Lightfoot - BBC in Concert, Royal Albert Hall, London, Britain, 6-4-1971

Gordon Lightfoot's career has curiously lacked live albums from his golden era of the 1960s and 1970s. He did release one live album in 1969, but it was early in his career and mostly had new songs on it, so it contained few of his classics.

In the early 1970s, the BBC has a TV series called "In Concert" that featured many great artists doing hour or half hour shows. Luckily, Lightfoot got a full hour. I found the video of his show (broadcast in early 1972 but recorded in June 1971), converted it to mp3, and cut it into individual tracks. (Unfortunately, I often had to cut the track right in the middle of the applause, since he had a habit of starting the next song while people were still clapping.)

For the show, Lightfoot is only accompanied by a bass player and lead guitarist, allowing one to hear his songs without the orchestration and/or drumming that sometimes occurred on his studio albums.

This album is an hour and four minutes long.

01 Summer Side of Life (Gordon Lightfoot)
02 Saturday Clothes (Gordon Lightfoot)
03 For Lovin' Me (Gordon Lightfoot)
04 Affair on Eighth Avenue (Gordon Lightfoot)
05 If You Could Read My Mind (Gordon Lightfoot)
06 talk (Gordon Lightfoot)
07 Steel Rail Blues (Gordon Lightfoot)
08 Your Love's Return (Gordon Lightfoot)
09 Ten Degrees and Getting Colder (Gordon Lightfoot)
10 Early Morning Rain (Gordon Lightfoot)
11 Farewell Nova Scotia (Gordon Lightfoot)
12 talk (Gordon Lightfoot)
13 Miquel (Gordon Lightfoot)
14 Me and Bobby McGee (Gordon Lightfoot)
15 talk (Gordon Lightfoot)
16 Nous Vivons Ensemble (Gordon Lightfoot)
17 Minstrel of the Dawn (Gordon Lightfoot)
18 Talking in Your Sleep (Gordon Lightfoot)
19 Canadian Railroad Trilogy (Gordon Lightfoot)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16693281/GORDNLGHTFT1971_BBCncrtRoylAlbrtHll__6-4-1971_atse.zip.html

If you want to watch the show, just search for his name and "in concert" on YouTube. I made the album cover from a still shot taken from the video.