Personnel includes: Gordon Lightfoot (vocals, guitar); Red Shea, Huey McCracken (guitar); Rick Haynes (bass); Jim Gordon (drums, percussion); Kenny Buttrey, Buddy Harmon, Jimmy Isbell (drums).
Producers include: John Court, John Simon, Elliot Mazer, Lenny Waronker, Joe Wissert.
Compilation producer: Thane Tierney.
Include liner notes by Leigh Hall.
Digitally remastered by Andrew Garver, Dan Hersch, and Bill Inglot.
He may be remembered by the unenlightened as a purveyor of mellow '70s AM radio hits, but Gordon Lightfoot is as fine a singer-songwriter as Canada has ever produced (no small accomplishment, considering the company), feted by no less than Bob Dylan himself. COMPLETE GREATEST HITS is as definitive a Lightfoot collection as you can get onto a single disc, and it bears out the aforementioned facts handsomely. "Early Morning Rain," one of Lightfoot's earliest hits, is a poignant evocation of lost love on a par with Merle Haggard's "Silver Wings." "If You Could Read My Mind" has enough introspective pop savvy to compete with Elton John's equally ubiquitous "Your Song." The bluesy, subtly sensual undercurrent of "Sundown" makes it plain why there's always been such a large female contingent in Lightfoot's audience, and "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" proves that the pop star can write a timeless-sounding folk ballad worthy of Townes Van Zandt. Clearly, this compendium presents Lightfoot quite rightly as a man for all seasons.
What the critics say...
Uncut (8/02, p.107) - 4 out of 5 - "...A genuine Canuck icon..."
Mojo (Publisher) (11/02, p.122) - "...This compilation does honour to a wholehearted musical life..."
