Gordon Lightfoot

Following the success of Sundown, Gordon Lightfoot continued his success by releasing a greatest-hits compilation. A double album (now a single CD), it contained the most popular songs from his Warner Bros. years on disc two, and he re-recorded many of his early songs for side one of record one.

As of 2011, Gordon Lightfoot had performed at Toronto's Massey Hall 150 times, the most shows any artist had played in the concert hall's 117-year history, so it's only fitting that the venerable Canadian folk icon should release a live album that celebrates both the venue's long tenure and his own. Culled from performances recorded between 1998 and 2001, All Live features 19 pristine, untouched (as in directly from the mixing board) cuts that span the legend's entire career, including timeless hits like "If You Could Read My Mind," "Sundown," "Canadian Railroad Trilogy," and "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald," as well as tracks from later albums like East of Midnight ("Let It Ride"), Waiting for You ("Restless"), and A Painter Passing Through.

This double CD contains all four of the Toronto singer/songwriter's '60s studio albums (the live LP Sunday Concert, not included here, was also released in the '60s). On these records, his resonant vocals, lyrical ambition, and melodic strengths produced as close a rival to Bob Dylan as Canada ever fashioned during that decade, and foreshadowed work by other major Canadian singer/songwriters of the late '60s, such as Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, and Leonard Cohen.