I tend to put youtube on as live action wallpaper - and not use any of my playlists, using the AI generated playlists. I hit on the for lack of a better term, the Woodstock Vintage playlist. I was pleasantly listening along to the generally mellow/perky CSN and whomever else, Rolling Stones, The Who, Cream and all, and then good old Gordon Lightfoot popped up with Wreck. I think I will need to dig into the storage locker for my brother’s CD collection because I know he has Summertime Dream, the album wreck is on.
I have to say, I really enjoy the AI picking stuff out for me, I get interesting new stuff I have never heard before, and old favorites I have forgotten =)
When I worked at a Renaissance Faire in the '90s, a performer friend of mine had an Irish song, “Back Home in Derry,” on his set list. I immediately noticed that the song had the same melody as “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald,” and I had always assumed that Lightfoot had borrowed the melody from an old Irish folk song.
Much later, I learned that it was the other way around: the lyrics to “Back Home in Derry” were written by Irish activist and Provisional IRA member Bobby Sands while he was in prison, in the early '80s. When the song was recorded by Christy Moore in 1984, Moore used the melody of Lightfoot’s song.
Folk music is frequently written to the same tunes as something else, or differences in wording most noted are the Child Ballads, check the wiki page for them, I love the descriptions =)
Not entirely certain - I use an LG television wifi, youtube, and on the left side menu scroll down to music, and I get a bunch of selections ranging from a Tom Waits playlist that meanders through all sorts of stuff ending up like 5 hours later with Steve n Seagulls. I think it gets the starting idea of play list from my play history and sort of wings it from there. I know the starting song is Buffalo Springfield’s For What It’s Worth, so when I went into youtube on my laptop and picked out a playlist starting with that I got this list. It looks like what is currently playing on my TV
For the better part of a year, I had “Edmund Fitzgerald” stuck in my head, except to the tune of “Stairway to Heaven”. Then one night, I heard a tune in a dream, woke up and still remembered the tune, and said to myself “There’s no way I just composed a tune like that myself; what song is it from?”. Later that day, I finally figured it out, and ended a months-long earworm.
WOTEF is a great tune that still holds up. As a Michigander it holds historical significance for me as well. I’ve visited the old Mariner’s Church in “De-TROY-it” where the church bell rang 29 times, and Whitefish Bay in the U.P., where the ED would have made it if she’d put 15 more miles behind her. I still get all goosebumpy when I hear the line “does anyone know where the love of God goes when the waves turn the minutes to hours”.
Kenobi -We were in Ireland several years ago and while having a pint or three in a pub in Killybegs, I brought up this little tidbit, None of locals had ever heard of “Wreck…” I was a little surprised but we all sang American Pie and everything was good.
I’ve listened to a lot of Scottish and Irish folk music for decades, particularly the Child Ballads, and also sea shanties, but I find The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald a bit… bland, both in narrative and tune.
I’m not criticising anyone who likes it - taste is unarguable.
To me the story, though true and tragic, is too straightforward and flat - ship sails on a routine commercial voyage, storm blows up, ship sinks.
There’s nothing about the struggles of the crew to keep her afloat, or to escape in lifeboats, or rescuers trying to reach them. No strong feelings or desperate efforts at all.
It’s a song, not a documentary. It’s a simple tribute to those who lost their lives, and also in its way a tribute to the awesome majesty of the Great Lakes, to which the name “lake” does not do justice – they are really small oceans, and also places of great beauty (which Gordie also celebrates in some of his music) as well as being places that can unleash the terrifying power of nature.
