The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald...

The cook says "well lads it's been nice to know you" -- I think it's spooky because the ending is a forgone conclusion for the crew and so here are these guys between life and death not expecting rescue and pondering the inevitable -- the whole song is a meditation on those last few minutes and what it felt like -- a rare country song I can claim to be moved by.

Anybody heard The Bee Gees' "Odessa" ? one of their tragedy songs about a ship going down, a sailor stuck on an iceburg going crazy carving away at the ice and imagining his wife back home taking up with the vicar. Not so moving, but heavily orchestrated and being the Bee Gees in '69 at the height of their first exposure to fame, groupies, drugs, a very surreal weird song -- does a good instrumental evocation of the sounds of the sea and the cold.

But back to Edmund Fitzgerald. It uses that "this is a true story" (I don't know) thing which always means the song gets taken more intensely to the listeners heart, even if you could call that vicarious snuff. That camraderie in the crew of the doomed -- the inevitable -- the song deliberately goes slightly too long, like when you know it's coming, minutes would turn into hours.

would make a great nautical shanty for that final cruise down the River Styx

Do you ever find yourself near the sailors' maritime cathedral? It's in some musty old hall in Detroit, apparently. ;)

For instance, as far as Lightfoot's epic history/storytelling songs go, I think "Canadian Railroad Trilogy" is far, far better.

bumping for the anniversary of the wreck

"fellas it's been good to know ya"

I almost started a huge fight with my wife a few years ago because she said she'd never heard of this song. Fortunately, I realized just before things really kicked off that I was trying to start a massive argument about Gordon Lightfoot and the sheer ludicrousness of the situation made me stop.

Great song but can't help but make me think of that Robyn Hitchcock song, "The Wreck Of The Arthur Lee"

Speaking of whom: Ridiculous On-Stage, Between Song Banter

http://i35.tinypic.com/2ebx0sz.jpg

It's hard for me to just think about this song simply in terms of being "just" a song. Growing up on the shores of Superior, the story of the wreck came back around at this time every year. There were a lot of old timers around who worked on the lake and remembered the day, and the weather is frequently as all-consumingly shitty as it was the day the ship went down.

if you're in the midwest/rust belt states you should drink some of this:

http://thegazz.com/gblogs/beerstoyou/files/2008/01/edmungfitz_bottleglass.jpg

The song charted in November of 1976, which is just after my very first vague memories of life, and you'd hear it on the radio all the time every November after. It was a pretty huge childhood memory for me and everyone within a couple years in age, to the point that when I was a kid I thought it sank about ten miles from my house instead of 300 or so east.

I miss driving out to the lake on horrible days in November just to be in awe of how scary it can be.

Dee-troy-yut

35 years ago today

http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/11/09/edmund.fitzgerald/index.html?hpt=C1

Lightfoot; such a classic. I live in WI and the song gives me chills every time I hear it. One of the greatest narratives in song I can think of.

just saw this on fb

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w1MMeZ6ospM&feature=player_embedded#!

amazing imo

The song charted in November of 1976, which is just after my very first vague memories of life, and you'd hear it on the radio all the time every November after. It was a pretty huge childhood memory for me and everyone within a couple years in age...

― joygoat, Tuesday, November 10, 2009 9:04 AM (1 year ago) Bookmark

in '76 i wasn't quite new to the world, but was new to america & american radio. this song made a similarly strong impression on me, (along with "bohemian rhapsody", "play that funky music" and "50 ways to leave your lover", each for different reasons). have heard it rarely in the last couple decades, probably just a small handful of times, usually in early november, but i'm always riveted through the end. one of the greatest story songs i've ever heard. i want to say that lightfoot deserves a lot more credit than he often gets, but i don't know his catalog, other than the hits.

buttholes version is cool, but never quite takes off. would have loved to hear gibby drop a couple verses.

classic and despite following a folky storyteller type formula, somehow unique. bet Billy Joel wishes he wrote it.

bump

fellas, it's been good to know ya

It's not November yet, but man is this making the hairs on my neck prickle tonight. It's just so icy - between the sad searing sweep of the lead guitar part and the otherwise subdued, gentle arrangement there's a whole span of the bleakness and tragedy of the situation. Also worth noting that Lightfoot doesn't go for any of the obvious chances to really open up on the vocals - - could easily imagine him belting out the last lines of the verses ("Fitz-gerAAAAALLLLLD!") but the verse just wraps and moves along. Somehow keeps the temperature just where it needs to be.

Crew of the Edmund Fitzgerald
Michael E. Armagost 37 3rd Mate
Frederick J. Beetcher 56 Porter
Thomas D. Bentsen 23 Oiler St.
Edward F. Bindon 47 1st Asst. Engineer
Thomas D. Borgeson 41 Maintenance Man
Oliver J. Champeau 41 3rd Assistant Engineer
Nolan S. Church 55 Porter
Ransom E. Cundy 53 Watchman
Thomas E. Edwards 50 Second Assistant Engineer
Russell G. Haskell 40 Second Assistant Engineer
George J. Holl 60 Chief Engineer
Bruce L. Hudson 22 Deck Hand
Allen G. Kalmon 43 Second Cook
Gordon F. MacLellan 30 Wiper
Joseph W. Mazes 59 Special Maintenance Man
John H. McCarthy 62 First Mate
Ernest M. McSorley 63 Captain
Eugene W. O'Brien 50 Wheelsman
Karl A. Peckol 20 Watchman
John J. Poviach 59 Wheelsman
James A. Pratt 44 Second Mate
Robert C. Rafferty 62 Steward
Paul M. Riippa 22 Deck Hand
John D. Simmons 63 Wheelsman
William J. Spengler 59 Watchman
Mark A. Thomas 21 Deck Hand
Ralph G. Walton 58 Oiler
David E. Weiss 22 Cadet
Blaine H. Wilhelm 52 Oiler

And all that remains is the faces and the names / of the wives and the sons and the daughters.

Incredible song. I doubt I ever heard it but once, maybe, before I moved to Ohio. And somehow being around people who knew the Great Lakes firsthand really clicked it into place for me. Can't think of very many other songs based on a real-life tragedy that so well balance the banality of it all with a real honoring of the dead. It's not exploitative and it's not bombastic, but nor does it dial things down so much that it loses the essential fact of a bunch of working people who died for no good reason, whose families never got to see them again. It's sincere, I think.

And man, that guitar part.

Some of you guys might dig this one. This cover is by the Down-Fi which features Craig Bell from Rocket from the Tombs (and others) on vocals and bass.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ioIiDLA_Zi4&feature=youtu.be

as the big freighters go, it was bigger than most

Dee-troy-yut

Saw this really cool site put together with more about the story, timeline and context:

https://noaa.maps.arcgis.com/apps/MapSeries/index.html?appid=858309daa74f4e6ebf81f32d128f7ed8

Dee-troy-yut

Was playing this earlier today and when I heard this I was thinking about the poll we did about how Robert Plant thinks "Darlene" is pronounced.

In case you were wondering, the ship Edmund Fitzgerald was named after a president of the Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Company of Milwaukeehttps://t.co/rB7exPIZgH pic.twitter.com/3Rd3udHCeV

— Michigan's Past (@MichiganHist) November 10, 2017

Ever since my first trip to UP a couple years ago and a stop at Whitefish Point, I've found myself thinking about this more and more often and playing the song every year on November 10th. Actually reading a book about shipwrecks on the Great Lakes right now!

Dee-troy-yut

i think this may be a canadianism, although i'm not sure why

totally a Canadianism, you get real used to it watching Wings games on CBC

lol my main example is penguins color guy bob errey

totally a canadianism, Mickey Redmond has been dropping that pronunciation for decades on Red Wings broadcasts

(and thank you!)

Maybe it's because I heard this endlessly on the radio as a four-year-old, but I never go out of my way to put this on. Here's my favourite Lightfoot shipwreck song:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I4cAnMZc79U

My favourite shipwreck song of all is "The Scorpion Departs but Never Returns" by Phil Ochs:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IbiJR-bqSfw

this is a great thread but i wish we could make it so you can only post to it on 10 november

Spent some of my childhood years growing up in the UP and there was this one time I got to take a plane ride back from Escanaba with a little league teammate and his dad who flew. Before the dad landed, he took us over our local bay and the Superior water was so clear you could see countless shipwrecks at the bottom of the bay.

I was at a bar in Superior, WI once and a guy told me his dad was a cook on the ship and went down with it, I choose to believe him

I was searching the tubes for versions of Red Iron Ore (a fantastic tune in its own way for fans of the Great Lakes and/or sea chanties) and came across this double-shot

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxUTteCudL8

Super nice day out for this anniversary, Gales of November nowhere to be found yet.

https://www.tiktok.com/@taylagoers/video/7159338279358319914

ngl, I like when 11/10 is colder and drearier for my annual walk along Lake Michigan listening to this, doesn't hit the same when it's sunny and 75

Did Lake Michigan steam like a young man's dreams?

On second thought, never mind.

I always read "the islands and lakes are for sportsmen" as sideways insult of lake michigan, like it's the little kids play area versus ICE WATER MANSIONS which is so much more teenage goth

Superior's the real real, though

Remembered!

that delivery of "Does any one know where the love of God goes/When the waves turn the minutes to hours?" gets me everytime.

The Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum’s annual Edmund Fitzgerald memorial event will be offered as a livestream ceremony this year. The event, scheduled for Friday, November 10, 2023 (7pm), is closed to the public, but will be available on this livestream link that you can watch from your device of choice. The buildings of the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum at Whitefish Point, are not open to the public on November 10, 2023.

In addition, the Michigan Maritime Museum (www.michiganmaritimemuseum.org) of South Haven, MI, will host a viewing of the Shipwreck Museum’s Edmund Fitzgerald livestreamed memorial service at their facility.

https://shipwreckmuseum.com/shipwreck-museums-48th-anniversary-edmund-fitzgerald-memorial-event-will-be-a-closed-event-livestreamed-in-2023/

Can't recall if I have posted it here or not but the Shipwreck Museum at Whitefish Point can be a spoooky, ominous place. Also really cool and informative.

it's interesting that there are so many shipwreck museums around the globe. Other than scattered memorials I can't think of any plane crash museums though. I guess plane crashes are mostly blamed on mechanical/human error, rather than acts of God, and so are seen differently?

Co-worker of mine in her 60s telling me how they'd have this activity at the skating rink in the late 70s where row of boys would face a row of girls.

One would skate from one side to the other, make their pick and then skate down the line between the two rows. Sometimes, the pair would go off together, but more often than not, the person picked would come back to make a selection from the other side of their own.

The most cringe and anxiety producing skating game I had heard in awhile with the cherry on top being — "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" would be the song that would play throughout all of this because it was six and a half minutes long.

There are grandmothers in suburban St. Louis today who likely flinch when those intro chords strike over the Smooth AM Hits XM channel.

I like the idea of a plane crash museum. I've personally lost several friends & acquaintances to plane crashes and only one to a shipwreck (or technically, lost at sea). I guess wind shear used to be an act of god that crashed planes but now there's technology to prevent that.

at the risk of being incredibly rude

I've personally lost several friends & acquaintances to plane crashes

do you live in alaska or are you related to paul wellstone?

No, just weird bad luck I guess. Especially for those people who are gone now.

xp can you elaborate on alaska = more plane crash prone?

not sure that it's more plane-crash prone, exactly, but most of it can only be reached by plane. an alaskan politician needs to fly a lot more than an east coast politician. and that's how ted stevens finally died.

also flying into juneau is apparently so harrowing (like, you'd better be lined up perfectly or you won't be able to clear the mountains on an aborted landing) that they've spent 70 years talking about moving the capital

bruh

i am innocent (of whatever you are suggesting)

A little technical, but this is a good analysis of the weather situation.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1FE69h-mdk

Icewater mansions.

i appreciate your constancy

This past summer we were up in the Upper Peninsula, where we went to the Great Lakes shipwreck museum in Paradise, MI. I asked my wife if she had ever heard "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald," and she said no! But she did hear it maybe four times that day. Here is the rescued bell:

https://i.imgur.com/mvtdUEX.jpeg

But she did hear it maybe four times that day

that's 25 short

tell me you didn't listen to US radio in 1976 without actually saying so...

Well, she was born in 1976, so ...

Imagine it's November 1976, when the top 10 featured this song alongside "Disco Duck" and "Muskrat Love"

That's why the Reprise Records bosses did exert some pressure on Gord to change the lyric so that Edmund Fitzgerald was an amorous dancing porcupine.

Not sure I saw it on this thread, but has anyone mentioned the time Wilco brought up Low and Richard Thompson in Duluth to play this song, an apparent disaster they've since termed "The Wreck of the Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald"?

i appreciate your constancy

― mookieproof, Sunday, November 10, 2024 6:43 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

:)

I admit, my persistence with revivals is not exactly because of the song, but because I grew up in the UP of Michigan, where the story is implanted in your head at an early age and where you experience gales of November (although less and less now for all the usual climate reasons.) If there was a thread about the ship and crew themselves I'd keep it there, but the song is great imo, and I love Gord's work in general. Helps for me to remember there are real people who are behind the story and their families/children are still around.

Everything about the song and story makes it seem as if they are centuries old, so I was shocked when I learned the wreck was only in 1975.

yea Gord really cashed in on that one

I'm with Dan M on this, I hope that the musicians covering this song aren't having too much fun with it at the expense of the actual people who perished on the ship. It wasn't all that long ago, and jfc look at the ages of some of the crew.

I grew up around dan and it feels like a sort of secret anthem/ballad for a lot of yoopers, I literally pictured it happening off the coast of the local beach when I heard the song on the radio as a kid.

It's the same lake but 150 miles straight west over water, which is also why I think so many people are taken with it. If you haven't seen lake superior during all seasons there's no real way to comprehend how massive and terrifying it really is. It's 300 miles of nothing but water from Duluth, MN to Pukaskwa National Park in Ontario.

I had heard it before, but yeah, definitely hit different as we were driving through the UP to Whitefish Point.

This very funny person works at the Duluth Maritime Museum:

we have several Fitzgerald artifacts here at the museum, but the only one from the wreck event is this life ring (found by the Coast Guard during the search) pic.twitter.com/hD8R6GhIRU

— duluth’s famous kaylee (@kayleefabulous) November 10, 2024

(funny in all of her other tweets, not that one)

If you haven't seen lake superior during all seasons there's no real way to comprehend how massive and terrifying it really is.

Seriously. It's huge. I think the stat I heard was something like you can fit all the other great lakes into Lake Superior, plus three more Eries. Something like that. It's over 1000 feet deep, always cold and more or less has oceanic weather patterns. We were supposed to take a kayak trip in July and there was a small craft advisory that scuttled it.

Here's a spooky picture of people scouring the beach at Whitefish Point looking for shipwreck artifacts:

https://i.imgur.com/q1zNnjk.jpeg

All in vain as Superior, it's said, ne'er gives up her dead.

Nice one:
https://www.etsy.com/listing/1812811575/stop-honking-im-crying-to-the-wreck-of

His birthday would've been tomorrow.

Here’s 1 minute of the Gales of November on our greatest lake today 🌊💦 pic.twitter.com/YqW96FgGN2

— The Wild North (@TheWildNorthTV) November 19, 2024

https://i.imgur.com/rpJ4XM8.jpeg

Happy Valentine's Day

Thought the revive would be related to a certain television show