General Chat

except by me ;) -- so in case any fans missed the sad news:

Gordon Lightfoot died this week at 84.

If You Could Read My Mind
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v5tr_L31StI

"UK hit 1971 peaked at No.30, 9 weeks on chart
The chart UK position did not reflect how much of a timeless classic this song is!!!"

The ranks of my generation's music will be thinning rapidly soon. No.1 shares his birthday with Sir Paul -- 10 years later. It won't be long before there are no Stones or Beatles around.

On the Canadian side, Neil Young isn't looking so young, and Joni Mitchell isn't a shadow of her young self. Tim Bachman -- brother of Randy who was formerly of The Guess Who ("American Woman") -- both of Bachman-Turner Overdrive ("Takin Care of Business"), died at 71 this past weekend. And of course Leonard has been gone a while now.

Joni Mitchell was recently awarded the Library of Congress Gershwin Prize for "American" music, somewhat bizarrely. We have just watched the concert on PBS -- which has apparently taken the full video off line. Here is the highlight, the finale in which she sings Summertime and everybody who's anybody sings Circle Game with her. Get out your hankies, if you've been feeling at all melancholy. "We can't go back, we can only look behind from where we came."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PNwjFU2yEBM

(The new youtube ... you can "skip ad" for the second commercial, but not for the first long tedious monstrosity.)

MUSICIANS
Lead Vocals: Joni Mitchell
Guitar solo on "Summertime": Celisse Henderson
Backing Vocals on "Summertime": Lucius and Brandi Carlile
Backing Vocals on "Circle Game": Cyndi Lauper, Herbie Hancock, Annie Lennox, Lucius, Brandi Carlile, Angelique Kidjo, Celisse Henderson, Ledisi, James Taylor, and Graham Nash
Music Director & Piano: Greg Phillinganes
Acoustic Guitar & Pedal Steel Guitar: Greg Leisz
Guitar: Blake Mills
Bass: Larry Klein
Trumpet: Mark Isham
Percussion: Marcus Mumford

I remember him well, Early Morning Rain was my favourite of his. Yes it's scary watching remembering them when they were young but watching them die one by one.

He is remembered on the BHC site

Apparently his sister married the son of two BHC children

Joonie-Cloonie - a blast from the past :-D :-D

Cx

*wave* Cynthia!

Shirley -- I figured it out: British Home Children.
https://twitter.com/HomeChildrenCan/status/1653578084426080258

My grandmother's sister married a home child. He prospered as a farmer in Ontario. His kids all moved to the US...

Duncan: Early Morning Rain, yes.

The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald. I was just reading that Paul Gross wanted to use the song in an episode of Due South (the Mountie in Chicago), but was told he would have to get permission from the families of every person lost in the disaster, and it just wasn't feasible. So he wrote a song with similar style and substance -- I just saw it in rerun, 25 years later, for the first time.

I saw Lightfoot once in my student days, I'm pretty sure. And then again quite a while later in a big concert with Simon & Garfunkel and Blue Rodeo. Aha, 1993, it was. Nearly 30 years ago.
https://www.pressreader.com/canada/now-magazine/19931111/282961038639172
http://theultimatebootlegexperience7.blogspot.com/2019/07/simon-garfunkel-1993-11-12-toronto-on.html

Joonie

I belong to the site because my mums elder half sister was a BHC in 1909

I am in touch with some of her grandchildren and grt grandchildren in Canada

I help with look ups for descendants of other BHC children who are researching their ancestry :-)

That's great that you managed to find them -- or vice versa.

If you ever need a hand, maybe searching the other way around (people in the UK looking for descendants of their family home child in Canada?), let me know if I might be able to help!

Thanks Joonie :-D