WAIM Radio #082: History In Song

This week at WAIM Radio, we're spending an hour in the past with a batch of musical history. What historical tune is your favorite?

Ask me to name a shipwreck, and I will almost surely reply, “The Edmund Fitzgerald”. To many, it might seem a surprising answer, but more otherwise obvious answers like The Titanic or The Lusitania or The Main would likely not occur to me until I had entered into some degree of rational thinking. You might possibly have never even heard of the Edmund Fitzgerald at all. To me, and a few generations of Midwesterners and music lovers, it is the stuff of absolute legend.

The SS Edmund Fitzgerald was a massive, record-breaking American freighter that carried taconite iron ore from mines to ironworks sites and steel factories. While the Fitzgerald was traveling from Minnesota to a steel factory in Detroit on its final voyage in November 1975, a powerful storm hit Lake Superior, bringing with it hurricane winds and high waves. The Edmund Fitzgerald sank on the evening of November 10. All 29 crew members died. This is but one of some 6,000 shipwrecks that are known to have occurred in the Great Lakes, yet it is without a doubt the most famous wreck in the history of the region.

The wreckage of the ship and loss of the crew were immortalized in song by the great Canadian folksinger Gordon Lightfoot. His beautiful ballad, “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” was released in 1976 and became a runaway number one hit in Lightfoot’s native Canada, and reached the #2 spot on the US Billboard Hot 100.

During my youth, each year on November 10, a Detroit radio host named JP McCarthy would broadcast the annual memorial service from the Maritime Cathedral in Detroit. An eerie quiet would fall just before the church bell rang 29 times, once for each man lost on the Edmund Fitzgerald. I remember feeling haunted by it. After the ringing of the bells, McCarthy would play the entirety of Lightfoot’s six minute paean to the lost sailors of the Great Lakes. Even as a child, it brought me to tears.

Other shipwrecks like the Reuben James and Old 97 have been immortalized in folk songs as well, but no story of disaster at sea has captured the ear of North America quite like Lightfoot’s tribute to the Fitzgerald. It is just one of dozens of examples of the way that we have used music to tell the stories of our past and to help keep our history alive.

This week at WAIM Radio, we’re bringing you a full hour of musical history. We’ve got the musical story of the aforementioned shipwreck, a murder spree, the Troubles in Ireland, lynchings, assassinations, outlaws, and more. Do you have a favorite historical tune you’d love to share? Tell us all about it.

You can listen to the full show in the player above. Make sure to also check out the full tracklist below for full details on what made the show. You can tune in Friday at Noon Eastern on Suburbs Radio to hear each show live as it airs. New episodes are also archived here at WAIM each Tuesday. Feel free to go back and listen to any of our episodes at any time in the WAIM Radio archive.

Cheers,
Matty C