Gordon Lightfoot and Anne Murray could have had a genre all to themselves for melodious voices from Canada whose music appealed to a wide audience. Their styles have been categorized variously as folk, folk-pop, folk-rock, country, and adult contemporary. Clearly, they both always had a good deal of crossover magnetism.
Murray released Cotton Jenny as a single a year after Lightfoot released it on his album Summer Side of Life in 1971. For some reason, although I remember his version vividly, I can’t recall ever hearing her version before even though it charted well and appears to have been the more successful of the two. Still, I like his version better. Both are listed below, back-to-back, so you can compare them for yourselves.
Note that Anne Murray had a bunch of other hits from 1978 on through the 1980s – this playlist stops early in the interest of time and space, but also to more evenly match up “his and hers” hits from a single era.
1970
If You Could Read My Mind (3:49)
Gordon Lightfoot
1970
Snowbird (2:18)
Anne Murray
1971
Cotton Jenny (3:24)
Gordon Lightfoot
1972
Cotton Jenny (3:00)
Anne Murray
1972
Danny’s Song (3:09)
Anne Murray
1974
Sundown (3:33)
Gordon Lightfoot
1973
A Love Song (2;50)
Anne Murray
1974
Carefree Highway (3:43)
Gordon Lightfoot
1974
You Won’t See Me (4:07)
Anne Murray
1975
Rainy Day People (2:49)
Gordon Lightfoot
1976
The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald (5:58)
Gordon Lightfoot
