"The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" was released in 1976, less than a year after the ship sank in Lake Superior. Gordon Lightfoot’s song peaked at number two on the Billboard chart that same year.

On paper, it should never have been a hit record. But despite the odds stacked against it — the 6-minute length, the somber subject matter, the last-minute recording session — “The Wreck of the Edmund ...

Without Gordon Lightfoot’s ballad, the SS Edmund Fitzgerald might have faded into history alongside thousands of other Great Lakes wrecks. He was inspired to write the song after reading the first ...

NASHOTAH, Wis.(AP) — Without Gordon Lightfoot's song, the Edmund Fitzgerald could have faded from memory along with the names of the roughly 6,500 other ships that went down in the Great Lakes before ...

No one was more surprised than Gordon Lightfoot when his ballad "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" became one of the biggest hits of 1976, less than a year after the disaster it commemorates. The ...