NOVEMBER 17 AUCTION IS AN ALL-ACCESS PASS TO GUITARS, GOLD RECORDS, HANDWRITTEN SET LISTS AND MORE FROM THE SINGER-SONGWRITER’S ESTIMABLE COLLECTION
By Christina Rees
When a musician’s musician dies, the grieving feels a little different. Just last year, in the days following the death of singer-songwriter Gordon Lightfoot, the online world of musicians and fans surfaced en masse to pay honor to the man who had given us some of the most emblematic and beloved songs of the 1960s and ’70s – “If You Could Read My Mind,” “Sundown,” “Carefree Highway” and “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” among them. The outpouring of tribute videos to Lightfoot included professional and amateur recording artists breaking down and celebrating Lightfoot’s distinctive guitar passages, his uniquely ballad-ready baritone, his gorgeously complex and narrative lyrics. Bob Dylan, who had influenced Lightfoot, counted Lightfoot as a prime influence of his own. “I can’t think of any Gordon Lightfoot song I don’t like,” Dylan said. “Every time I hear a song of his, it’s like I wish it would last forever.”
Gordon Lightfoot with Johnny Cash, one of the many superstars who covered the musician’s hit songs over the years
For those who know their way around a guitar and a beautifully written song, the loss of Lightfoot is indeed the loss of an industry legend. On November 17, Heritage will offer generations of Lightfoot fans and followers a slice of the man’s considerable legacy in its Gordon Lightfoot Estate Collection Music Memorabilia Signature® Auction. Included are more than a dozen of the guitars Lightfoot wrote songs and recorded and toured with, his amplifiers, handwritten set lists, gold records, the turquoise he so famously wore along with some of his favorite stage outfits, personally owned artworks and promotional materials, awards and signed performance contracts.
These are the things Lightfoot surrounded himself with over the course of his prolific five-decade career, one that started in the 1960s as his early songs were recorded and turned into hits by the likes of Peter, Paul and Mary (“For Lovin Me”) and Marty Robbins (“Ribbon of Darkness”). In 1970 Dylan covered Lightfoot’s “Self-Portrait” (so had Elvis), and Lightfoot, a man heavily associated with his home country of Canada, was on the brink of his own household-name status. He released his own recording of “If You Could Read My Mind” that same year – the song, about the breakup of his first marriage, conveys in its sublime melody the universal heartbreak of two people growing apart – and Lightfoot’s reputation as a master songwriter was solidified. About that era of his career and his new contract with Warner Brothers, Lightfoot later said, “Let’s say I was probably just advancing away from the folk era and trying to find some direction whereby I might have some music that people would want to listen to.”
One of the posters available in Heritage’s November 17 Gordon Lightfoot Estate Collection auction
In the following years Lightfoot’s songs could be heard all over the radio dial as his sound became a soundtrack of the decade. He released his hits “Sundown” and “Carefree Highway” in 1974, “All the Lovely Ladies” and “Rainy Day People” in 1975, “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” and “The House You Live In” in 1976. The appeal of his songs stretched across generations and genres. His songs were covered by everyone from Barbra Streisand to Johnny Cash, but now that they knew it, listeners loved Lightfoot’s voice, his 12-string guitar sound. His lyrics unfolded like pure poetry. From “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald”:
Does anyone know where the love of God goes
When the waves turn the minutes to hours?
The searchers all say they’d have made Whitefish Bay
If they’d put 15 more miles behind her
They might have split up or they might have capsized
They may have broke deep and took water
And all that remains is the faces and the names
Of the wives and the sons and the daughters.
Among the ensembles in the auction are Lightfoot’s personally owned and worn Mike Weber shirt, a custom made Nudie leather shirt and a custom pair of Levi’s jeans with a photo match of Lightfoot wearing the jeans.
Lightfoot’s work ethic, heavy touring schedule until the very end, and self-effacing attitude toward fame and glory made him a favorite of musicians everywhere. The feeling is that Lightfoot kept his priorities in check, with his music leading the charge and his music community providing solid ground for his relentless self-drive. He was famously in love with his birthplace and never set up a permanent home outside Canada. Upon his death, The New York Times wrote about his dedication to Canada: “For Canadians, Mr. Lightfoot was a national hero, a homegrown star who stayed home even after achieving spectacular success in the United States and who catered to his Canadian fans with cross-country tours. His ballads on Canadian themes, like ‘Canadian Railroad Trilogy,’ pulsated with a love for the nation’s rivers and forests, which he explored on ambitious canoe trips far into the hinterlands.”
“When I had my shop in the 1970s through the early ’80s, when I would play Gordon in the shop, people would always come up and ask who he was,” says Garry Shrum, Heritage’s Director of Entertainment & Music Memorabilia. “His albums had so many great deep cuts that always touched people’s hearts. In this auction, we have so many unusual pieces of Gordon’s prolific songwriting life. When I attended a sold-out tribute concert early this year at Massey Hall in Toronto, the fans were amazing, with such great stories. Gordon had played there more than 150 times – more than any other artist.”
A platinum sales award for Lightfoot’s 1976 album ‘Summertime Dream,’ best known for the beloved epic ‘The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald’
Heritage is indeed proud to offer key pieces connected to Lightfoot’s prodigious output. The November 17 auction presents once-in-a-lifetime access to the things that gave life to the musician’s chart-topping songs, his live performances, his industry and fan recognition, and his personal day-to-day. The event is a door through which Lightfoot’s millions of followers and fellow musicians can step through to take a closer look at the man who gave them the music that scored their lives.
Lightfoot was known and celebrated as a nimble and fluid musician, and he showed a preference for acoustic Martin and Gibson guitars, with a sprinkling of Fender and the occasional Oscar Teller thrown in, or an Ed McGlincy or Manzer custom from a golden 1970s era. The 20-plus guitars and handful of his favorite well-loved amplifiers in this event are a testament to Lightfoot’s long and productive working relationship with his instruments and equipment both on tour and in the studio, and while a few of Lightfoot’s earliest guitars were stolen, the guitars he used to write some of his best-known songs and took on the road are here.
The 1963 Gibson B45-12 sunburst acoustic guitar Lightfoot used to write ‘Sundown’ and ‘The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald’
Lightfoot’s decades-long bass player and one of his closest friends, Rick Dutkiewicz, told Heritage that Lightfoot used this gorgeous sunburst Gibson B-45 12-string to write “Sundown” and “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald,” and he featured it on the cover of the Sundown album. Dutkiewicz also recounts that for decades Lightfoot used this Gibson B-45 12-string as the primary live-set guitar for his hits, as well as others that were played in regular tuning, while he kept the aforementioned guitar in alternative dropped D-tuning for the songs that required it. And while Lightfoot was not much known for his work with six-string electrics, Dutkiewicz says this 1980 Gibson SG red solid body was Lightfoot’s guitar of choice to write, record and tour his 1983 Salute album.
One of Lightfoot’s handwritten set lists, including songs such as ‘Beautiful,’ ‘If You Could Read My Mind’ and ‘Sundown’
A favorite category for music memorabilia collectors is the handwritten or typed set list, and this auction has some excellent examples from Lightfoot: This one, typed with hand-drawn underlines from an unknown date, is a marathon of more than 30 songs, and this handwritten one with the familiar one-word substitutions for full song titles includes “Wreck” and “Sundown.” Fans who took advantage of Lightfoot’s considerable tour schedule got to know the troubadour’s work on a deeper level and can appreciate the hand-signed performance contracts included here. This one, signed in 1965, correlates with some live Lightfoot performances in 1966; Lightfoot’s early hand-signed contracts with the American Guild of Authors and Composers and the American Federation of Musicians are here, too, among others.
Lightfoot was the recipient of countless awards, gold and platinum records, and other markers of appreciation and career recognition, and he held onto them. On November 17 Heritage offers a number of these significant markers, including platinum awards for the songs “Summertime Dream” and “Sundown” and gold awards for “Endless Wire,” “Old Dan’s Records,” “Dream Street Rose” and more. And like a lot of singer-songwriter icons, Lightfoot turned himself out well, and some of his favorite jewelry and stage ensembles are here: his green velvet blazer custom-made by Beth Gordon; a few of his favorite signature turquoise bracelets; a custom-made, double-breasted cream suit from Lou Myles that’s offered along with Lightfoot’s Grammy nomination plaque for “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.”
Also on offer are the objects of Lightfoot’s personal environment. There are artworks he owned that related to his songwriting, such as these “Edmund Fitzgerald” works gifted and signed by their artists; an excellent selection of framed photographs of Lightfoot pictured with fellow musicians Bob Dylan, Tony Bennett, Kris Kristofferson, Harry Chapin, John Denver, Mary Travers, Johnny Cash, Bill Graham, James Taylor and Rita Coolidge; and, remarkably, Lightfoot’s personal writing desk. These treasures only scratch the surface of a remarkable auction that celebrates a figure whose music impacted millions of fans and fellow musicians.
“It was such an honor to work with Gordon Lightfoot’s estate,” Shrum says. “They have such a deep love for Gordon and have brought us amazing personal pieces from his many years of writing and performing. The love and affection that surrounds Lightfoot, his legacy and all of his music is such a powerful force, and Heritage is thrilled to share this part of Lightfoot’s life with his fans and music collectors everywhere.”
CHRISTINA REES is a staff writer at Intelligent Collector.