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LIGHTFOOT RETURNS
MARIPOSA FOLK FESTIVAL: Sunday evening lineup features folk music legends
Posted By COLIN MCKIM, THE PACKET AND TIMES
Posted 2 days ago
Folk icon and local hero Gordon Lightfoot is as central to the Mariposa Folk Festival as Big Chief Island is to Lake Couchiching.
And organizers are ecstatic that the 71-year-old composer of classics such as theWreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald andIf You Could Read My Mind,will wow fans once again at the 50th edition of Canada's most venerable folk music festival next summer.
"People are always excited when they see Lightfoot is playing at Mariposa," said artistic director Mike Hill.
"He's the No. 1 name in folk music in Canada. And he's a hometown boy."
Although Lightfoot's performances have been among the high points of the festival in recent years, he did not burst onto the scene in 1961 when the festival was born.
In fact, the duet he was in at the time with Terry Whalen, called the Tu- Tones, was turned down that inaugural year.
"They were a good duo, but not out of this world," says Ruth Jones, one of the founders of the festival, which was first staged at the Lions Oval.
Ian (Tyson) and Sylvia (Fricker), who are also returning for the festival's 50th consecutive year, topped the bill in 1961, along with the Travellers, Omar Blondahl, Bonny Dobson and Alan Mills.
"We had great people that first year," recalls Jones, now 82.
The Tu-Tones did make the cut the second year, playing country-flavoured folk standards, but weren't anything special, Jones said.
It wasn't until a few years later, when she heard Lightfoot singing his poignant balladEarly Morning Rainon the radio that Jones realized how much she had underestimated the talent of the Orillia-born folky.
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` But to be fair, she didn't much care for a scruffy fellow named Bob Dylan the first time she heard him perform in the early 1960s in Toronto.
Unless a singer could give her goose-bumps, something Dylan failed to do, Jones couldn't get excited.
"I really didn't think he was going to go far."
Lightfoot played at the festival as a solo artist in 1964 when the event was held in Toronto, having worn out its welcome after three increasingly rowdy years in Orillia.
Lightfoot may have performed at Mariposa once or twice after that before headlining the festival's successful return to Orillia in 2000.
In 2004, still frail after surviving a near-fatal abdominal aneurism, Lightfoot made a surprise appearance at Mariposa and sang one song, his voice wavering, but perfectly in tune.
Jones was in the audience that night. "It was a different voice, but beautifully modulated," she recalls.
"What really blew me away was when he came on stage, there was a complete hush. Everyone was absolutely holding their breath."
Lightfoot played a full show at Mariposa in 2005 and in 2007 braved a deluge and lightning storm in the festival's electrical finale.
"I remember him coming backstage and tipping his guitar and water pouring out," Hill said.
In 1961, Ian Tyson and Sylvia (Fricker) Tyson performed as a duo. But for the 50th they will perform separately in a Sunday night lineup that includes Murray McLauchlan.
"It is truly extraordinary that Gordon Lightfoot, Ian Tyson, Murray McLauchlan, and Sylvia Tyson -- four pillars of Canadian folk music -- are sharing one stage on one evening," said Mariposa Folk Foundation president Catherine Brennan.
As well as performing on Sunday evening, Sylvia Tyson will appear with the four-member group, Quartette, at other times during the three-day festival.
The 50th Mariposa Folk Festival will take place July 9-11, 2010, in Tudhope Park. Weekend passes are on sale now. Prices will increase on Jan. 1.
The festival is providing audience camping to help accommodate the influx of additional visitors expected for the 50th anniversary festival.
Tickets and more information are available at
www.mariposafolk.com.
cmckim@orilliapacket.com