Search - Gordon Lightfoot :: United Artists Collection

The very best of gord

Richard Conard | walnut creek ca usa | 08/20/2009

(5 out of 5 stars)

"I have had this CD set for decades and still play it all the time. I have been a hard core Gord fan since the vinyl 60's and have seen and heard him many times in concert. His song Home From The Forest always brings tears as it is the near story of my long dead brother(I have to be very careful of when I play it for that reason). Almost all of my Gord faves are not his biggest sellers, as I love the nuance he places at exactly the correct lyrical point in some songs, nuances that others may not appreciate or even hear and thus do not make these songs his biggest popular sellers.



Gord is a distant relative on my maternal grandmother's side so I am partial to him for that, but I think am also very realistic and pragmatic in my opinion of him as the most sensitive songwriter this side of Kris Kristofferson(Me

And Bobby McGee;Sunday Morning Coming Down), both of whom have a special songwriting style and talent that touches places in our hearts that most others can only dream of doing. And Gord's voice, unlike Kris', with a timbre, vibrato and breath control to die for, is not to be compared to anyone but Joan Baez in the folk singing community for pure vocal talent.



Gord, as with all songwriting geniuses, is very prolific, and as someone once said about the poet Emily Dickinson, some of what she wrote is not great poetry but most of it is as good or better than any other poet's body of work. I feel just that way about Gord's early work here where it is so obvious that he is absolutely in his prime of voice and songwriting, and most of his songs move my heart as few others can(especially in disc 1). For that, I am so grateful for and thankful to him for the special place he has made in my heart that I visit so often. As I write this I am listening to the oblique poetic beauty of his song Changes, and realize well as I listen that this collection tells the early story of the pure acoustic Gord before American celebrity got its grip into him and persuaded him to alter his music more toward mass popular tastes, a move which did not make him nearly as appealing to me later as he was in his earlier work shown in this vibrant package. This one is the very best of all."