(CNN) Gordon Lightfoot, Canadian singer-songwriter whose enduring popular hits include “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” and “Sundown,” He died on Monday, his spokesperson told CNN. He was 84 years old.
Spokeswoman Victoria Lord said Lightfoot died of natural causes at 7:30 pm at Sunnybrook Hospital in Toronto.
His death comes less than a month after his 2023 US and Canadian concert schedule on April 11 was canceled. This cancellation was due to “health-related issues,” according to a Facebook post.
Lightfoot found success on the US pop charts in 1970 with the song “If You Can Read My Mind”. This track also earned the artist the second of four Grammy Award nominations, Best Male Pop vocal performance.
His 1976 ballad about a freighter sinking in the Great Lakes, “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald,” reached No. 2 on the Billboard charts. Other hits included “Carefree Highway”.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau called the folk icon “one of our greatest singer-songwriters” in his speech Tweet Monday evening expressing condolences.
Trudeau wrote: “Gordon Lightfoot captured the spirit of our country in his music—and in doing so, helped shape Canada’s acoustic landscape. May his music continue to inspire generations to come, and may his legacy live on forever.”
Lightfoot is pictured at his home in Toronto in 2012 while promoting his album ‘All Live’.
Lightfoot was inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame in 1986, and has received 13 prestigious JUNO Awards—out of a total of 29 nominations—presented by the Canadian Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences.
He was also awarded one of his country’s highest civilian honours, a Companion of the Order of Canada, in 2003.
Born in Orillia, Ontario, in 1938, Lightfoot has credited Bruce Springsteen and Bob Dylan among his greatest influences.
Lightfoot’s songs have been covered by many legendary artists, including Dylan, Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Neil Young, Barbra Streisand and Eric Clapton, according to the Canadian Music Hall of Fame.
His life and legacy are examined in the 2020 documentary, Gordon Lightfoot: If You Could Read My Mind.
“It bothered me the fact that no one ever had a bad word to say about me,” Lightfoot said of the documentary.
Despite being widely hailed as an icon, Lightfoot told The Globe and Mail in 2008 that he didn’t feel entirely comfortable with the label.
“Sometimes I wonder why I’m called an icon, because I don’t really think of myself that way. I’m a professional musician and I work with very professional people. It’s just the way we go through life,” he told the publication.