Day After Day #80: Sundown

Day After Day is an ambitious attempt to write about a song every day in 2024 (starting on Jan. 4).  

Sundown (1974)

For many a Canadian kid in the mid-1970s, Gordon Lightfoot was an artist you constantly heard on the radio, whether you wanted to or not. Straight outta Orillia, Ontario, Lightfoot was a folk singer who was a fixture in Canada since the early '60s but didn't break through in the U.S. until 1971 with "If You Could Read My Mind" (#5 on the Billboard Hot 100). 

Lightfoot was prolific in the '70s, releasing eight albums. But 1974's Sundown was his biggest, hitting #1 in the U.S. and Canada. The title track did the same, a quiet but dark bluesy number about a man wondering what his girlfriend is up to. 

"I can picture every move that a man can make/Gettin' lost in her lovin' is your first mistake/Sundown, you'd better take care/If I find you've been creepin' round my back stairs/Sometimes I think it's a sin/When I feel like I'm winning when I'm losing again."

But the back story of the song reveals an even more interesting tale because the song was written about Cathy Smith, who was once a backup singer for The Band. Lightfoot hired Smith to work for him and then began having an affair with her (he was still married at the time). He was involved with Smith for three years and at times was obsessively jealous about her, once firing an opening act because he thought they were flirting with her. It wasn't until 2008 that he admitted "Sundown" was written about Smith.

Smith's story grew even more infamous after she left Lightfoot. She became a drug dealer, selling to Keith Richards and Ronnie Wood when they were touring as The New Barbarians. Smith eventually began selling drugs to John Belushi, and she admitted injecting Belushi with 11 speedballs (cocaine and heroin), which ultimately led to his death in 1982. She ended up admitting what she did to the National Enquirer, but she moved to Toronto and didn't return to the U.S. until 1986, when she pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter and several drug charges. She served 15 months in prison and then was deported to Canada after her release. She died in 2020.

Lightfoot, on the other hand, continued to thrive. His 1975 song "Rainy Day People" (also reportedly about Smith) went to #26 on the Billboard Hot 100. He had a #2 hit in the U.S. with his 1976 song "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" and another top 40 hit in 1978 with "The Circle is Small (I Can See It in Your Eyes." He continued to release new music through the '80s and '90s, but had a series of serious health problems in the 2000s. Lightfoot kept touring throughout. He died in 2023 of natural causes at the age of 84.

I never owned any of Gord's music, but I've always known it. My parents would listen to easy listening stations when I was a kid, usually Toronto's CHFI, and Lightfoot was on all the time. Even at a young age, I could tell Lightfoot wasn't playing boring old fogey music like Paul Anka or Engelbert Humperdinck. "Sundown" always had a sinister edge to it, which I always appreciated.

"Sometimes I think it's a shame/When I get feeling better when I'm feeling no pain."