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? 

erik_squires

Here's another vote for James McMurtry. Does Choctaw Bingo qualify as a historical event? Either way, it's a hell of a story.

Early Lucinda Williams. "Pineola" is a masterpiece of storytelling..

Finally, Tom T. Hall. "The Story Songs" is damn near miraculous start to finish.

I don't know if there is a better song than "the Wreck......", but there are other good ones.

"Roads to Moscow" Al Stewart

"Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts" Bob Dylan

"Hurricane" Bob Dylan

"American Pie" Don McLean

"Jack and Diane" John Mellencamp

"Cut Across Shorty" Rod Stewart

 

Harry Chapin: Cats in the Cradle or Taxi...

Cat Stevens: Most of what he did including: Boy with the moon and stars

Jim Croce: Photographs and memories, Time in a bottle, Operator, Bad Bad Leroy Brown

Bruce most songs but I will take: The River

Billy Joel: Piano Man, Allentown

Beatles: Rocky Racoon

of course GORDON LIGHTFOOT!

 

Two performers come to mind:

- James Keelaghan (with Oscar Lopez)/ Compadres  album,  playing a great rendition of “Cold Missouri Waters” and “Red River Rising”;

- Laura Smith/ Everything is Moving album, playing “Lonely Waterloo” and “Magdalene Mc Gillivray”

I had the good fortune to see Laura Smith, accompanied by a piano, give a very moving performance of her album at a little church NE of Wolfville Nova Scotia, not long before she passed away (too soon).