Childhood Gordon Lightfoot recordings found and digitally remastered

Parishioners at St. Paul’s Church in Orillia, Ont. will be treated to rare audio recordings thought to be forever lost of Canadian music legend Gordon Lightfoot singing a Christmas carol as a child.

“It gave me goosebumps as soon as I heard it,” admitted recording engineer Rob Currie.

Members of St. Paul’s recently stumbled upon the treasured recorded songs sung by a young Lightfoot and brought them to Gravenhurst to be digitally remastered.

Rob Currie works on remastering the recently discovered Gordon Lightfoot childhood audio tracks in Orillia, Ont., on Thurs., Dec. 21, 2023. (CTV News/Ian Duffy)

Currie quickly got to work to remove the vinyl scratching and bring the youthful voice of a 12-year-old Lightfoot to life.

“I just happened to watch the Beatles documentary where they separated the piano from John Lennon’s voice using AI, so I thought, hmm, that might work with this because the AI thought the noise was an instrument,” Currie said.

The remastered version of this Austrian Christmas carol will be heard for the first time in its entirety on Christmas Eve at the church where Lightfoot sang as a young choir boy.

“The church is his family, so to be able to have a multigenerational music going on with Gordon still singing as part of the mix is just kind of what Christmas is all about,” said Dan McCoy, St. Paul’s music director.

Even after his passing, Gordon Lightfoot’s influence continues to resonate with the next generation of choir members at St. Paul’s, in the city where the musical icon’s career took shape.

Gordon Lightfoot’s picture in the 1956/57 yearbook. (Supplied)

“So interesting how someone who’s so big came from here, grew up here, just like me. That’s really cool,” said Grade 9 student Selema Bauman.

“We’re both people who love music, and I think that’s why we’re kind of the same,” added Grade 2 student Gordie Gauldie.

“Just to hear what talent he had at such a young age, I really think, puts a feather in the cap of his whole career,” Currie concluded.

The hope now is to locate and restore the original vinyl record, ensuring that Lightfoot’s early recordings can be enjoyed by fans worldwide.