Mike Ives, The New York Times; How ‘The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald’ Defied Top 40 Logic
"Yet unlike songs that use a real-life story as the basis for embellishment, Mr. Lightfoot’s ballad hewed precisely to the real-life details. The weight of the ore, for example — “26,000 tons more than the Edmund Fitzgerald weighed empty” — was accurate. So was the number of times that the church bell chimed in Detroit.
Decades later, Mr. Lightfoot changed the lyrics slightly after investigations into the accident revealed that waves, not crew error, had led to the shipwreck. In the new lyrics, he sang that it got dark at 7 that November night on Lake Superior — not that a main hatchway caved in.
“That’s the kind of meticulous, looking-for-the-truth kind of guy that he was,” Mr. Greenberg said."
