Gordon Meredith Lightfoot Jr. CC OOnt (November 17, 1938 – May 1, 2023) was a Canadian singer-songwriter and guitarist who achieved international success in folk, folk-rock, and country music.

Credited with helping to define the folk-pop sound of the 1960s and 1970s,[1] he has been referred to as Canada's greatest songwriter,[2] having several gold and multi-platinum albums[3] and songs covered by some of the world's most renowned musical artists.

[4] Lightfoot's biographer Nicholas Jennings said, "His name is synonymous with timeless songs about trains and shipwrecks, rivers and highways, lovers and loneliness.

"[5] Lightfoot's songs, including "For Lovin' Me", "Early Morning Rain", "Steel Rail Blues", "Ribbon of Darkness"—a number one hit on the U.S. country chart[6] with Marty Robbins's cover in 1965—and "Black Day in July", about the 1967 Detroit riot, brought him wide recognition in the 1960s.

"[9] Lightfoot was a featured musical performer at the opening ceremonies of the 1988 Winter Olympic Games in Calgary, Alberta, and received numerous honours and awards.

At the age of twelve, after winning a competition for boys whose voices had not yet changed, he made his first appearance at Massey Hall in Toronto, a venue he would ultimately play over 170 more times throughout his career.

[18] Lightfoot performed extensively throughout high school, Orillia District Collegiate & Vocational Institute (ODCVI), and taught himself to play folk guitar.

[24] After his return to Canada, Lightfoot performed with the Singin' Swingin' Eight, a group featured on CBC TV's Country Hoedown, and with the Gino Silvi Singers.

[25][26] In 1961, Lightfoot released two singles, both recorded at RCA in Nashville and produced by Louis Innis and Art Snider,[27] that were local hits in Toronto and received some airplay elsewhere in Canada and the northeastern United States.

Appearances at the Newport Folk Festival, The Tonight Show starring Johnny Carson, and New York's Town Hall increased his following and bolstered his reputation.

Unhappy at a lack of support from United Artists, he defected to Warner Bros. Records, scoring his first major international hit in early 1971 with "If You Could Read My Mind".

Lightfoot signed to Warner Bros./Reprise in 1970 and scored a major hit in the United States with "If You Could Read My Mind", which sold over one million copies by early 1971 and was awarded a gold disc.

[30] The album also featured a second recorded version of "Me and Bobby McGee", as well as "The Pony Man", "Your Love's Return (Song for Stephen Foster)", and "Minstrel of the Dawn".

Over the next seven years, he recorded a series of successful albums that established him as a singer-songwriter: During the 1970s, Lightfoot's songs covered a wide range of subjects, including "Don Quixote", about Cervantes' famous literary character, "Ode to Big Blue", about the widespread killing of whales, "Beautiful", about the simple joys of love, "Carefree Highway", about the freedom of the open road, "Protocol", about the futility of war, and "Alberta Bound", which was inspired by a lonely teenaged girl named Grace he met on a bus while travelling to Calgary in 1971.

Lightfoot appeared at several 25th anniversary memorial services of the sinking, and stayed in personal contact with the family members of the men who perished in the Edmund Fitzgerald.

In addition to the title cut, it includes "Ghosts of Cape Horn" and "On the High Seas" and the Leroy Van Dyke standard "The Auctioneer", that was a concert staple for Lightfoot from the mid-1960s to the 1980s.

In April 2000, Lightfoot taped a live concert in Reno, Nevada; this one-hour show was broadcast by CBC in October, and as a PBS special across the United States.

In September, before the second concert of a two-night stand in Orillia, Lightfoot suffered severe stomach pain and was airlifted to McMaster University Medical Centre in Hamilton, Ontario.

He underwent emergency vascular surgery for a ruptured abdominal aortic aneurysm,[46] and he remained in serious condition in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU).

On this album, various artists, including The Cowboy Junkies, Bruce Cockburn, Jesse Winchester, Maria Muldaur, and The Tragically Hip interpreted Lightfoot's songs.

[54] Lightfoot dispelled those rumours by phoning Charles Adler of CJOB, the DJ and radio station he heard reporting his demise, and did an interview expressing that he was alive and well.

[55] In 2012, Lightfoot continued to tour, telling a sold-out crowd June 15 at Ottawa's National Arts Centre that he still performs sixty times a year.

Three members of Lightfoot's band died over the years: Red Shea in June 2008 from pancreatic cancer, Clements at 63 on February 20, 2011, following a stroke,[65] and original bassist John Stockfish from natural causes on August 20, 2012, at 69.

[68] Carpenter contended that Lightfoot both romanticized Canadian history and looked more deeply into the country's past – an aspect of his music that has been "largely lost in the effusive eulogies in the media".

He said in an interview that the difficulty with writing songs inspired by personal stories is that there is not always the emotional distance and clarity to make lyrical improvements such as the one his daughter suggested.

[72] To stay in shape to meet the demands of touring and public performing, Lightfoot worked out in a gym six days per week, but declared in 2012 that he was "fully prepared to go whenever I'm taken."

[74][75] Lightfoot was a long-time resident of Toronto having settled in the Rosedale neighbourhood in the 1970s, which once hosted an infamous after-party following a Maple Leaf Gardens date on Bob Dylan's Rolling Thunder Revue tour.

[89] A tribute concert took place at Massey Hall on May 23, 2024, featuring performances of Lightfoot songs performed by his band, who continue to tour as The Lightfoot Band, and Blue Rodeo, City and Colour, Julian Taylor, Kathleen Edwards, Murray McLauchlan, Serena Ryder, Tom Wilson, Allison Russell, Burton Cummings, Tom Cochrane, Aysanabee, William Prince, Sylvia Tyson, and The Good Brothers.

The opening verse mentions John Stockfish and Red Shea leaving no doubt about the identity of this Lightfoot who "is an artist painting Sistine masterpieces."

In 2007 Canada Post honoured Lightfoot and three other Canadian music artists (, Paul Anka, Joni Mitchell, and Anne Murray) with postage stamps highlighting their names and images.