Gordon Lightfoot's Daughter To Honor the Edmund Fitzgerald by Singing His Famous Ballad

As fall turned into winter in 1975, Canadian singer/songwriter Gordon Lightfoot read accounts of a ship sinking in Lake Superior. He then put to pen to paper, composing a song about it.

The ship was the Edmund Fitzgerald, which went down with all 29 crew members aboard on the evening of Nov. 10, 1975. The song was “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald,” which became one of Lightfoot’s hits and probably his most famous song.

On Sunday, Nov. 9, Lightfoot’s daughter Meredith Moon plans to sing it in concert at the Valentine Theater in Toledo, Ohio. It will be a first for her. “I’m actually still learning the song,” she says.

Moon has tried to forge her own path as a singer/songwriter and very rarely sings her late father’s songs in concert. But she felt like the show being so close to the anniversary of the ship’s sinking and in Toledo (many of the crew were from Northern Ohio) made it a natural.

“Playing the song feels like a good way to help honor the story that I obviously grew up knowing a great deal about, thanks to my dad,” she says. “I’ll try to be his representative now that he can’t be there. On a spiritual level, it feels like something I have to do.

“I’m trying to be a representative and do the song justice and do the families of those who were lost justice.”

The song, a mournful retelling of the ship’s fate and the shock and grief that followed, defied conventional wisdom. Lightfoot made it a point for the song to be historically accurate, even changing the lyrics in live performances after new information came to light.

At nearly six minutes long, it’s longer than songs that typically got radio airplay, and the subject matter didn’t seem conducive to a top-40 hit. (Humorist Dave Barry said of the song, “Talk about your party tunes!”) But the song spent 21 weeks on the Billboard charts, peaking at No.2, and remained a staple of Lightfoot’s live performances until his death in 2023.

Moon says she started planning for the Toledo date this spring, as part of a tour promoting her third album, “From Here to the Sea,” which was released Sept. 12. She estimates she can play at least a half-dozen instruments — and plans on bringing her guitar and banjo for the show in Toledo, as well as a fiddle player.

She says her own music tastes are widespread, counting as influences classical and Appalachian folk music. (Her favorite composer is Franz Liszt.) “I listen to just about everything,” she says. “I love how creative human beings are with music. It’s an endless craft.”

She made an effort to stay away from her father’s music, only occasionally singing his songs — with his blessing.

“My dad himself used to say ‘You don’t need to play my songs. Your songs are good enough and you should be playing those,’” she says. “Of course, this event is different, and I know he’d be happy I’m sharing the song in his place.”

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