Gordon Lightfoot Songbook CD

SONGBOOK also contains a 64-page booklet.
Personnel includes: Gordon Lightfoot (vocals, guitar, piano); Red Shea (guitar, dobro); Charlie McCoy (guitar, harmonica, piano, celeste, bells); Huey McCracken, Grady Martin, Bruce Langhorne, David Rea, Jerry Shook, Chip Young, Terry Clements (guitar); Pee Wee Charles (pedal steel guitar); Ry Cooder (mandolin); Vassar Clements (fiddle); John B. Sebastian (harmonica); Hargus Robbins, Floyd Cramer (piano); Van Dyke Parks (harmonium); James Newton Howard (keyboards, synthesizer); Bill Lee, John Stockfish, Rick Haynes, Norbert Putnam (bass); Barry Keane, Kenny Buttrey (drums, percussion); Herb Lovelle, Buddy Harman, Jimmy Isbel (drums); Dave Brown, Bob Phillips (percussion); Anita Kerr Singers (background vocals).
Producers include: Art Snider, John Court, Gordon Lightfoot, John Simon, Elliot Mazer.
Compilation producers: Gordon Lightfoot, Thane Tierney.
Recorded between 1962 and 1996. Includes liner notes by Gordon Lightfoot, Nicholas Jennings and Thane Tierney.
All tracks have been digitally remastered.
Gordon Lightfoot's Songbook is a career-spanning, four-CD, 88-song box set with a pretty chronologically even balance of material from the mid-'60s through 1998. It also has 15 previously unreleased cuts, as well as his 1962 debut single, "(Remember Me) I'm the One"/"It's Too Late, He Wins" (which is lame MOR Nashville country). One could quibble with the song selection ("Black Day in July" is missing, for instance) and the relatively light attention to his 1960s work (which is limited to disc one); an opportunity was also missed to include a rarity by excluding his mid-'60s single of Bob Dylan's "Just Like Tom Thumb Blues." But generally it's a representative sampling of his most meaningful, or commercially successful, recordings. As for the previously unreleased songs, it's a tribute to Lightfoot's consistency that these don't sound out of step with the rest of the program, but also true that none of these are particularly exceptional or interesting. The following is true of so many box sets of this type that it feels like a cliché to point this out once again, but by giving equal space to various phases of his career, the music starts to go downhill steeply at around the middle of disc three, marking Lightfoot's descent (more graceful than some) into adult contemporary office music. There are extensive liner notes in the enclosed hardbound book, along with comments on each song by Lightfoot himself. Unless you're a Lightfoot obsessive, though, The United Artists Collection (with the bulk of his 1960s recordings) and Gord's Gold will cover just about everything you would want. ~ Richie Unterberger
Although the Canadian-bred Gordon Lightfoot is a virtual deity in his homeland, he has not achieved the icon status of Dylan, Neil Young, or even Paul Simon on American soil. Lightfoot has been a prolific and consistent songwriter and performer since the '60s, and his work has been covered endlessly. "If You Could Read My Mind" alone has spawned 100 different versions! Yet Lightfoot remains more a secret hero than a household name.
Rhino's 4-disc box sums up an estimable career in a deluxe package replete with chestnut favorites, rarities, and seldom-heard early efforts. Folk purists will be overjoyed with Disc 1, where Lightfoot is basically unaccompanied. The spare "Early Mornin' Rain" and "Bitter Green" are arguably more effective than their over-produced '70s counterparts. It is the '70s material included on Discs 2 and 3, however, that put Lightfoot on the map on both sides of the border. With "Sundown" and "Carefree Highway," he assumed a laid back perfection. Why he wasn't able to carry that commercial success through the ensuing decades has more to do with a fickle market and the onslaught of technology than it does with any serious decline in his art.

4 Cds

Dirty Linen (12/99-1/00, pp.59-60) - "...covers the entire range of Lightfoot's output, from his earliest recordings to the title track from his latest CD....All box sets should aim as high, and succeed as much as SONGBOOK does."