He could read my mind

        Gordon Lightfoot died on Monday evening in Toronto.  He was 84.   A part of my youth died with him.   I remember spinning some of his early albums on my stereo until they were reduced to a series of pops and clicks.

       Of course he is best remembered for "The wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald", a ballad about the sinking of an ore carrier on Lake Superior in the  1970's.  I preferred his more contemplative songs, like "If you could read my mind" and "Early Morning Rain".   As he and other folk singers from the early 60s die, it puts a melancholy coda to my own youth and that of so many other baby boomers who made singers like Lightfoot stars.   RIP Gordon.