FOR NEARLY 40 YEARS Gordon Lightfoot has been the musician's musician. Few can match his success as a songwriter, recording artist, and performer. A professional singer in his native Canada while still in his teens, Lightfoot first gained fame in the early...

Byline: Stephanie Caltagirone Aug. 21--Gordon Lightfoot is a grand storyteller a master who's written some of the most enduring tales in folk history. On Friday night, he played to a loudly appreciative audience at the Sovereign Performing Arts Center who clapped...

The legend of the life preserver of the Edmund Fitzgerald has been wrecked.A vacationing family this month found a life ring that reads "Edmund Fitzgerald" along a remote patch of Lake Superior, and the device resembles a ring recovered from the famed ship that sank...

Today is Saturday, Nov. 17, the 321st day of 2007. There are 44 days left in the year.Today's Highlight in History:On Nov. 17, 1800, Congress held its first session in Washington in the partially completed Capitol building.On this date:In 1558, Elizabeth I acceded to the...

In the old days of popular music, men were men and women were—it says in some of those recent analyses of old songs—abused. Now, though, David Bowie and other painted persons are happy to be asexual, bisexual, polysexual, pansexual, whatever works, and many of the pop stars who are still interested in music (you remember music) are phasing out the Me-Tarzan-You-Jane (or vice versa) slant in favor of a commitment more, ah, aware politically. Against that background then, one is likely to notice...

There is a literati in popular music, a group of people with refined musical taste, education, and judgment, and my contention that Gordon Lightfoot is at the head of it just keeps getting more plausible with every record he makes. Lightfoot imposes increasingly tougher standards upon himself, and his albums consistently add poetry to the mostly commercial form in which he works. In short, he keeps adding songs to that precious five or so per cent of everything new that is worth keeping. Technically, his wo...

It may be an anomaly that no one has become more cliched than the "singer-songwriter." With only him/herself to talk about, the singer-songwriter has either to transcend personal perspective or repeat him/herself to the point of dry exhaustion. Most singer-songwriters, protected by the screen of high income and cult worshippers, choose dry exhaustion. The exceptions—Elton John, Loudon Wainwright and, lately, Bruce Springsteen and Bob Dylan—have returned to folkie/rock 'n r...