This article will inform readers on the parents of Gordon Lightfoot, a Canadian singer-songwriter and guitarist and some personal information.
Gordon Meredith Lightfoot Jr. CC OOnt was a Canadian singer-songwriter and guitarist who achieved international success in folk, folk-rock, and country music. He was born on November 17, 1938, in Orillia, Canada.
He was of Scottish descent. He had an older sister, Beverley (1935–2017). His mother recognized Lightfoot’s musical talent early on and schooled him to become a successful child performer. He first performed publicly in grade four, singing the Irish lullaby “Too Ra Loo Ra Loo Ral”, which was broadcast over his school’s public address system during a parents’ day event. He is credited with helping to define the folk-pop sound of the 1960s and 1970s.
As a youth, he sang in the choir of Orillia’s St. Paul’s United Church under the direction of choirmaster Ray Williams. According to Lightfoot, Williams taught him how to sing with emotion and how to have confidence in his voice. Lightfoot was a boy soprano; he appeared periodically on local Orillia radio, performed in local operettas and oratorios, and gained exposure through various Kiwanis music festivals. 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.
As a teenager, Lightfoot learned piano and taught himself to play drums and percussion. He held concerts in Muskoka, a resort area north of Orillia, singing “for a couple of beers”.
Lightfoot performed extensively throughout high school, Orillia District Collegiate & Vocational Institute (ODCVI), and taught himself to play folk guitar. A formative influence on his music at this time was 19th-century master American songwriter Stephen Foster.
He was also an accomplished high school track-and-field competitor and set school records for shot-put and pole vault, as well as playing the starting nose tackle on his school’s Georgian Bay championship-winning football team. His athletic and scholarly aptitude earned him scholarships at McGill University’s Schulich School of Music and the University of Toronto, Faculty of Music.
He has been referred to as Canada’s greatest songwriter and was known internationally as a folk-rock legend. Lightfoot’s songs, including “For Lovin’ Me”, “Early Morning Rain”, “Steel Rail Blues”, and “Ribbon of Darkness”—a number-one hit on the U.S. country chart with Marty Robbins’s cover in 1965—and “Black Day in July”, about the 1967 Detroit riot, brought him wide recognition in the 1960s. Canadian chart success with his own recordings began in 1962 with the No. 3 hit “(Remember Me) I’m the One”, followed by recognition and charting abroad in the 1970s.
He topped the US Hot 100 or Adult Contemporary (AC) chart with the hits “If You Could Read My Mind” (1970), “Sundown” (1974); “Carefree Highway” (1974), “Rainy Day People” (1975), and “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” (1976), and had many other hits that appeared in the top 40.
He received an honorary Doctor of Laws degree from Trent University in Spring 1979 and was made a Companion of the Order of Canada in May 2003. In November 1997, the Governor General’s Performing Arts Award, Canada’s highest honor in the performing arts, was bestowed on Lightfoot. On February 6, 2012, Lightfoot was presented with the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal by the Lieutenant Governor of Ontario. June of that year saw his induction into the Songwriters Hall of Fame. On June 6, 2015, Lightfoot received an honorary doctorate of music in his hometown of Orillia from Lakehead University.
Who are the parents of Gordon Lightfoot?
When Gordon Meredith Lightfoot Sr. was born on 1 April 1910, in Lambton, Ontario, Canada, his father, George Lightfoot, was 30 and his mother, Emma Jane Swartz, was 28. He married Jessie Vick Trill on 17 July 1934, in Barrie, Simcoe, Ontario, Canada. In 1934, at the age of 24, his occupation is listed as a bank clerk in Orillia, Simcoe, Ontario, Canada. He died in March 1974, in Orillia, Simcoe, Ontario, Canada, at the age of 63, and was buried in Saint Andrews And Saint James Cemetery, Orillia, Simcoe, Ontario, Canada.
He got married to his wife Jessica Vick Trill on 17 July 1934 in Barrie, Simcoe, Ontario, Canada, and had one child with her. Jessica Lightfoot, the mother of Gordon is a Dr. Lecturer in Ancient Greek Literature, Classics, Ancient History, and Archaeology. Hailing from New Zealand, Jessica Lightfoot studied performance violin at the University of Auckland and later gained a Master of Music in musicology from the same institution. She has pursued a career in arts administration, currently as Manager of Programs and Development at Concert Artists Guild, and previously at the Orchestra of St Luke’s and Chamber Music New Zealand. She is passionate about inclusion in the arts for all people.
Source: www.ghbase.com
ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7qLTBmqqeZpOkunCzzqubqKZdobaotNOfpqisXaWus7HNrapmpZWawW6zzqubqKZdqL9urc2dZKOdo6i2pK2O