1. We Come Here To Sing
2. Fast Freight
3. The Fox
4. Dark As A Dungeon MP3 clip from my record (full song below)
5. Sinnerman
6. This Is My Song
7. Kilgarry Mountain
8. Calypso Baby
9. Summer Love
10. Children Go Where I Send Thee
11. Copper Kettle
12. Lord I'm So Weary
In January, 1962 Gordon Lightfoot recorded a live album, performing with his high school friend Terry Whelan in a duo called the Two Tones. The album, called Two Tones At The Village Corner, was released on two record labels, Chateau and Canatel. Most of the songs are international folk, including standards such as The Fox, Copper Kettle and Kilgarry Mountain, but Lightfoot included one original (This Is My Song), and also a Merle Travis song called "Dark As A Dungeon"; that's his partner, Terry Whelan, introducing "Gordie". The original song is nothing like those he would be writing and performing a year and a half later, but his vocals on the Travis standard were very much in the "Lightfoot style", and his guitar playing illustrates "Travis style" fingerpicking, which he would go on to use in many of his songs over the next five decades.
Audio of "Dark as a Dungeon"
This album is currently available on CDs from record companies in two European countries (1962 studio recordings are no longer protected by copyright there, nor are any live recordings). Both CDs combine the Two Tones songs with early recordings made in 1962 at Chateau. Two of the Chateau songs are on Songbook; the rest appeared only on a record released in 1971, to capitalize on Lightfoot's success with "If You Could Read My Mind," and Lightfoot managed to buy their entire inventory and destroy the records they still had. Many of the songs were released as signles. You might say he didn't like the recordings. The second of the CDs has the Two Tones songs in stereo, which is surprising. Whether they have the original master tapes with stereo (if that exists), or they separated the tracks usig modern software, I don't know. But if you would like to have these recordings on CD, rather than vinyl (copies are still sold occasionally but for high prices), you have a choice. FYI, I have one of the CDs but also have it listed for sale in my store here; I haven't opened it. I don't have a copy of the other one - yet. They are 1962: Featuring The Two Tones and Rarities from the Early Years. The second of these CDs has two songs at the end that are from neither source and I have seen nothing that says where they are from; both are songs that were released in 1966 on Lightfoot!, but were performed live before then. In any case, I have decided that I can live without the CDs given that have both album on vinyl, multiple copies of some of the singles, and other early recordings on bootlegs.
