Dorie’s Different Reality

Ian Punnett, the weekend host of the radio show CoasttoCoastAM, started this thread of thought in my mind by playing Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald by Gordon Lightfoot last night. This is the 32nd anniversary of the ship going down. It happened about three weeks before Mike left the Navy and returned to Toledo with his native Californian wife. That would have been me, the cold, grumpy one.  One of the things I didn’t know before I lived there is that Toledo is a seaport along the St. Lawrence Seaway. I used to see big lakers like the Fitz on the river heading out to Lake Erie, as I drove to work over the I-280 bridge. The captain of the Edmund Fitzgerald lived in the same town as Mike’s mother.  So it was a disaster that remains memorable to people who have lived in the Great Lakes Region.

Ian called Gordon Lightfoot’s song, an epic poem. Yes come to think of it, it is.  A folk song; the kind people used to write to immortalize a great event. I love the opening scene in the movie Coal Miner’s Daughter: Little Loretta is walking in the hills around her home in Kentucky, singing The Great Titanic: 

…The sun shown down in it’s glory
Shown down on the deep blue sea.
Where the Titanic was sinking…
I don’t know who wrote it. I think it’s by the talented unknown folk artist, circa 1912.
Roy Acuff also wrote a song about the Titanic and I bet he sang it on the Opry stage now and again. So people in Nashville sang about the tragic loss of life out by Nova Scotia, 40 or 50 years before.

“Popular” Music has changed. So much music since the 80’s is all about love and relationships: picture Madonna writhing around singing Like a Virgin Sheesh, I remember Peter, Paul and Mary singing Puff the Magic Dragon.  30/40 years ago the music covered more topics. Troubadours like Bob Dylan sang out against war and hypocrisy. Ray Stevens (love him!) wrote silly songs about Streaking and such. At least the old folkies are still out there. We saw the Kingston Trio a couple of years ago. It was great fun singing along “Hang down your head Tom Dooley, Hang down your head and cry…”
But I DO like that country song, She Thinks My Tractor’s Sexy.  It’s about more than the girlfriend anyways!

This entry was posted on Sunday, November 11th, 2007 at 8:18 am and is filed under Baby Boomers, Music. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.