Great post Erik! I don’t think anything surpasses Lightfoot’s Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald. But Knopfler’s Sailing to Philadelphia gets a special mention.
Better story teller than Edmund Fitzgerald?
There was a thread on A'gon about the most perfect song. We had reasons for picking various, but for me it was Gordong Lightfoot's Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.
Perhaps it featured an aspect of song writing that no one else much cared for: A deep and detailed story in the song.
So I ask you, A'goners, what songs are as good or better at telling a story of a historical event?
108 responses Add your response
Aw geez @viridian, why didn’t "TNTDODD" come to mind! Robbie Robertson says he wrote the song for Levon, using all the stories about the South that Helm had been telling the other members of The Hawks/The Band over the years. They were all Canadian, Levon being born and raised in Arkansas. Gee, I wonder if casting The Confederacy in a positive light would be allowed now? ;-) Another good songwriter who has written about the South is Randy Newman. In fact his Good Old Boys is a "theme" album (I prefer that term to "concept"), all the songs relating to the South in one way or another. "Kingfish" and "Every Man A King" might qualify for the topic of this thread. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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@docknow that whole Hell on Church Street album by the Punch Bros as was the original by Tony Rice is excellent. @northman Love that tune as I also do Hatfield by Widespread Panic. Many of their tunes tell a solid story. The Vic Chessnut/Widespread Panic band Brute also has some great ones like Aunt Avis. I would add pretty much any album by Darrell Scott or Guy Clark for some excellent story telling tunes. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
+1 @ronboco | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
@jonwolfpell So true. "Circle of Steel" was a powerful imprint on my childhood - that feeling of desperate hope amidst despair and squalor. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Seeing we are on the subject of "great Canadian stories" (so it seems), Id give a shout out to The Tragically Hips "Wheat Kings" about wrongly prisoned David Milgaard. Also "38 Years old" about a justly prisoned Michael. And "50 Mission Cap", and , well , "New Orleans is sinking" (more profetic telling as it was before Hurricane Katrina". (Edit: can’t really say better than the Wreck of Edmond Fitzgerald thought, that's a perfect song). | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
@larryi - 'And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda' was by the Skids, no? | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Gordon is truly a master singer / songwriter & that is one of my all time favorites. He had many great songs that tell a story. Another o e is “Circle of Steel” on Sundown. Harry Chaplin had two great ones also: Taxi & Cats in the Cradle. Interesting to note that almost all the songs mentioned are of sadness & despair. I wonder if we can name some of happiness & love? I can’t think of any. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Strange Fruit, while a very important song, is not a great story teller. It is taken from a poem which sets up an allegorical scene and is about a general subject (horrible as it was). To be a truly great story-telling song it has to have details, be about a specific person or event, and tell us things we might not otherwise know. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Rodney Crowell wrote a great song that recounts his hearing of "Ring Of Fire" on the radio while driving in the car with his pa one night. It’s entitled "I Walk The Line Revisited", revisited because Johnny Cash appears on the recording of the song, which can be found on Rodney’s astoundingly great album The Houston Kid. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
"Strange Fruit". Written by Abel Meeropol, sung by Billie Holiday. Bob Dylan wrote a lot, among them "The Lonesome Death Of Hattie Carroll", "Oxford Town", "Hurricane", and "The Death Of Emmitt Till". All the above are related to the lingering (to this day) racism in The United States Of America, following the end of slavery, our original sin. And all are stories about African-Americans murdered (with the exception of "Hurricane") at the hands of white Americans. A great related movie is To Kill A Mockingbird, a film I first saw as a child. It had a profound effect on me, and remains a favorite of mine. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
GORDON LIGHTFOOT - “Ghosts of Cape Horn” from GordonLightfoot.com 1980 "Ghosts of Cape Horn" documentary film September 23, 2011 — Another fan was looking for this film, and when he didn't find it he sent me an email. So, of course I looked for it for him, and - surprisingly - I found the entire film online at the National Sailing Hall of Fame website. I had never seen it before, but - like any devoted Lightfoot fan - knew that the song, "Ghosts of Cape Horn", had been written for the film, as its title song. The documentary tells the story of sailing vessels making the trip around Cape Horn, before the Panama Canal was built. Like any Lightfoot story song, the lyrics tell a complex story in just a few minutes. The film runs approximately 55 minutes, and is now available at YouTUbe, from which it is displayed on this webpage. The song was released on the 1980 album, Dream Street Rose
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@akg_ca So true. Good storytelling in a perfectly romanticized Lightfootian way and a beautiful melody, too. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
GORDON LIGHTFOOT: “Canadian Railroad Trilogy”
"Canadian Railroad Trilogy" is a story song that was written, composed, and first performed in 1966 by Canadian singer-songwriter Gordon Lightfoot, who released his original recording of it in 1967. The song was commissioned by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) to celebrate the Canadian Centennial in 1967. "Canadian Railroad Trilogy" describes the building of the trans-Canada Canadian Pacific Railway, the construction work on which was completed in 1886. The CPR was incorporated in 1881. BackgroundThis song was commissioned from Lightfoot by the CBC for a special broadcast on January 1, 1967, to start Canada’s Centennial year. Writing and composing it took him three days.[1] It appeared on Lightfoot’s album The Way I Feel later in the same year along with the song "Crossroads," a shorter song of similar theme.[2] The structure of the song, with a slow tempo section in the middle and faster paced sections at the beginning and end, was patterned more or less opposite to Bob Gibson’s and Hamilton Camp’s "Civil War Trilogy," famously recorded by The Limeliters on the 1963 live album Our Men In San Francisco. In the first section, the song picks up speed like a locomotive building up a head of steam.[3] While Lightfoot’s song echoes the optimism of the railroad age, it also chronicles the cost in sweat and blood of building "an iron road runnin’ from the sea to the sea." The slow middle section of the song is especially poignant, vividly describing the efforts and sorrows of the nameless and forgotten "navvies," whose manual labour actually built the railway.
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@larryi Good call on "Cold Missouri Waters." When I first heard that I was inspired to read Normal McLean's book about that disaster. Those poor guys. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
THE EAGLES from their tour, singing “HOLE INTHE WORLD ” about their heartache arising from 9-11 that interrupted their recording session personally and it expresses the angst and deep wound emotionally of all Americans ( and also to we Canadians who also suffered many lives lost in the fall of the Twin Towers in NYC ) arising from that day of infamy event.
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