Gordon Lightfoot - Summertime Dream - [CD]

If you owned only one in the series of superlative albums Gordon Lightfoot recorded for Reprise in the '70s, chances are this was it. It's still a great choice. Summertime Dream became his biggest U.S. seller thanks to the success of "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald"--a song chronicling the 1975 sinking of a giant ore carrier in Lake Superior and surely one of the least likely radio hits of all time. Lightfoot created a haunting, peculiarly Canadian tale of the struggle of human will against a natural world that could be as savage as it was beautiful. Perhaps his most famous song, "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" tends to overshadow Summertime Dream's other strengths. Though he shakes his fist at militarists on "Protocol," the disc also includes some of Lightfoot's most poignant songs of love gone wrong, including "I'm Not Supposed to Care" and "Race Among the Ruins." Pee Wee Charles's evocative pedal steel guitar playing makes "Spanish Moss" another highlight, even if it's hard to know exactly what Lightfoot means when he sings "I like you more than half as much as I love your Spanish moss." None of this is loud enough to rouse a sleeping babe thanks to Lightfoot's buttery crooning and the typically tasteful production by Lenny Waronker and Lightfoot himself. --Jason AndersonProduct DescriptionGordon Lightfoot