@Pearish Smith

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Gordon Lightfoot was not only one of Canada’s most famous musical exports but also one of the key figures in the ’70s singer-songwriter boom. His warm, oaky baritone, precision-tooled lyrics, and mix of folk, country, and pop influences made him a major hitmaker in both his homeland and the U.S. Born in Orillia, Ontario, in 1938, he began singing as a child and eventually gained experience in classical music, jazz, and more before becoming a part of the burgeoning folk scene in the early ’60s. By mid-decade, he had found as much success in Canada with other artists’ versions of his songs (Ian & Sylvia and Peter, Paul & Mary all recorded his tunes) as with his own recordings, but his smash 1970 ballad “If You Could Read My Mind” began his run as a U.S. pop star. Plenty more hits followed over the next few years, including “Carefree Highway,” “Rainy Day People,” and the U.S. No. 1 smash “Sundown”; however, Lightfoot’s 1976 true-life seafaring epic “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” became his best-known work. His output slowed after the ’80s, and he fought his way back from numerous serious health issues in the 2000s, including a stroke. But by decade’s end, he was performing again as an elder statesman of Canadian music and one of the nation’s most celebrated sons. Lightfoot died in May 2023 at the age of 84.

Singer, songwriter, and civil rights activist Odetta was a pivotal figure in the ‘50s and ‘60s folk era. Born Odetta Holmes, the vocalist got her start as a teenager singing opera. She began releasing folk albums in the ‘50s, and would inspire a wide range of musicians including Bob Dylan, Harry Belafonte, and Janis Joplin. During the Civil Rights movement, Martin Luther King, Jr. dubbed her “The Queen of American Folk Music,” when she sang at the March on Washington in 1963. Odetta devoted much of her later career to jazz. She would continue to perform until her death in 2008.

John Prine has been a hero of the singer-songwriter world since the release of his milestone 1971 self-titled debut. With a rough-hewn twang informed by his family's Southern heritage, the Chicagoan established himself as an American treasure by using plainspoken language and simple but incisive country and folk melodies to spin tales that pack an enormous emotional wallop. Whether lamenting the loneliness of old age on “Hello in There” or celebrating the joys of intoxication on “Illegal Smile,” Prine did everything with a deeply absorbing mix of poetry, humanity, and cockeyed humor, right through his bittersweet 2018 late-career masterpiece The Tree of Forgiveness. He died on April 7, 2020, at the age of 73.

Other than Bob Dylan, no one personified ‘60s folk protest music more than Phil Ochs. A mainstay of the Greenwich Village folk scene, Ochs charted the political chaos and possibilities of one of the most tumultuous periods in American history with both a hard-eyed sense of humor and a heartbreaking sincerity. Ochs was revered by the folk community, but he could also tweak the noses of the folk establishment as effectively as Dylan, as his latter-day musical experiments proved.