Can-Con 45 Of The Day - August 21

[radiofan]

Today's Can-Con 45 is from 1968 ... an early hit for Gordon Lightfoot ... "Black Day In July" ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L07TKGjseyg

[freqfreak2]

If all that Gordon Lightfoot left behind was this track alone - an event not immortalized in song by any other writer - his legacy would have been sealed as one of the greatest observers of sixties culture.

What he did afterwards was pure gravy.

Thanks Gord. Great song. Can't hear it often enough.

[Richard Skelly]

Too bad Gord was stuck on United Artists, a label so lame it couldn't mange to promote any Lightfoot singles onto the Billboard Hot 100 during several of his most productive years. Not one!! In my opinion, UA was happy to make the easy dough from selling truckloads of every Lightfoot release in Canada without putting much effort into breaking him elsewhere.

[freqfreak2]

United Artists ....

Some time ago I agreed with a fellow vinyl fan & email acquaintance of mine that UA was but only a very minor player in the record business. Then we started to list all of the great albums and artists that they handled and our minds were changed.

Holy crap! Just look at this list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Artists_Records#Roster

I have to agree that UA never seemed interested in promoting anybody. Considering who they had under their wing, with genres all over the map, they should have been a label with a lot more clout and an even greater legacy.

And for the trivia minded, UA was the child of silent film greats D. W. Griffith, Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford, and Douglas Fairbanks, with the studio born in 1919 to allow for actors to control their own interests.

Strange how history evolves.