THE GREATEST SONGS OF THE 1960s THAT NO ONE HAS EVER HEARD
2,151) Gordon Lightfoot — “Bitter Green”
Warning: If you are from Vancouver, Canada, read no further, as this song reached #5 there!
Many of Gordon Lightfoot’s (see #92, 167, 392) best songs went down well before the Edmund Fitzgerald, including this lovely and haunting ’68 folk ballad. And no, pedalpumping0036, the song is not about kale! (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-4MbJNXqqY) It is “about a woman who roams the hillsides above . . . town for years waiting for her lover to come home”. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitter_Green) It “has a lovely melody, and in the mode of many fine traditional songs . . . it supplies the listener with just enough detail to establish a kind of plot, the rest of which must be created in each person’s individual imagination.” (Jim Moran, https://compvid101.blogspot.com/2012/05/gordon-lightfoots-bitter-green.html)
Jim Moran writes:
At [his] best, . . . Lightfoot combine[s] genuine emotion with deceptively simple-sounding melodies and the imagination[] of [a] great storyteller[]. Though not one of GL’s high profile hit records, “Bitter Green” demonstrates all of those qualities and has been a favorite of Lightfoot aficionados since its appearance on his fourth studio album, 1968’s Back Here On Earth on the United Artists label. . . . The instrumental backing here is supplied by Red Shea on lead guitar and John Stockfish on bass, the pair who supported Lightfoot on all of his UA albums. For me and for many long-term GL fans, Shea and Stockfish created the best and purest accompaniment that Lightfoot ever enjoyed. Shea especially is taking the basic major and minor chord accompaniment and embellishing it with fifths and an occasional major seventh – which just means that the accompaniment is rather more complex than you’d normally expect in a simple folk ballad of lost love.
https://compvid101.blogspot.com/2012/05/gordon-lightfoots-bitter-green.html
As does Ray McGinnis:
“Bitter Green” was Gordon Lightfoot’s fourth single to chart on Vancouver’s pop radio stations and his second to crack the top ten. . . . [It] was a song concerning a tragedy. Bitter Green is a place the woman in the song walked above the town. Since she walked there so often, the townsfolk gave her the nickname Bitter Green. She is full of tears and sorrow. For decades she waits for a man to return to her. There is speculation he was a sailor who died at sea or someone in prison. Eventually she dies. After her death a stranger comes to the town. Full of tears, he kneels at the churchyard where her grave is marked, recalling her kiss. . . . “[Bitter Green”] peaked at #5 in Vancouver, where the DJs at CKLG listed the song in error as “Bitter Queen”. The single only reached #44 on the national RPM Canadian singles charts. It did not chart in the USA.
https://vancouversignaturesounds.com/hits/bitter-green-gordon-lightfoot/
And McGinnis writes of Gordon Lightfoot:
Gordon Meridith Lightfoot Jr. was born in Orillia, Ontario . . . . He studied music at McGill, the Faculty of Music at the University of Toronto and the Westlake College of Music in Hollywood, California. Lightfoot would end up as part of The Swinging Eight, a featured group on the CBC program Country Hoedown. In the years that followed Lightfoot performed in coffee houses in Toronto. He got work as a performer on the CBC’s Country Hoedown and went to England to host the BBC TV Country and Western Show in 1963-64. At that time, Lightfoot’s songs were recorded by numerous recording acts. These included “Early Morning Rain” by both the Kingston Trio and Judy Collins, and “Ribbon of Darkness” by Marty Robbins. The attention Lightfoot got as a songwriter landed him a record contract with United Artists in 1965. In 1966 he was commissioned by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) to compose the “Canadian Railroad Trilogy” for a broadcast on New Year’s Day in 1967, the nation’s centennial. . . . Lightfoot’s breakthrough in the USA was with “If You Could Read My Mind”. He went on in the mid-70’s to chart “Sundown” to #1 and “The Wreck Of The Edmund Fitzgerald” to #2 in the USA. (Both were #1 hits nationally in Canada). . . . Gordon Lightfoot’s last charting single in Vancouver was “Daylight Katy” in 1978. Between 1966 and 2004 Lightfoot released 19 studio albums and 46 singles.
https://vancouversignaturesounds.com/hits/bitter-green-gordon-lightfoot/
Here is the ’75 version:
Here it is live:
Here is the Idle Race (#30, 343, 491, 1,246, 2,125):
Here are the Johnstons:
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