Canadian Recording Artists - 2007

On June 29, 2007, Canadian Post issued the stamps set in souvenir sheet which composed of 4 postage stamps featuring the Canadian Recording Artists. The artists have  depicted  are Gordon Lightfoot, Joni Mitchell, Anne Murray and Paul Anka.

Gordon Meredith Lightfoot, Jr  was  born on November 17 1938 is a Canadian singer-songwriter who achieved international success in folk, folk-rock, and country music, and has been credited for helping define the folk-pop sound of the 1960s and 1970s. He has been referred to as Canada's greatest songwriter and internationally as a folk-rock legend.

Lightfoot's songs brought him international recognition in the 1960s. He experienced chart success in Canada with his own recordings, Lightfoot was one of his "favorite Canadian songwriters and is absolutely a national treasure.Lightfoot was signed to Warner Bros.

Reprise in 1970 and had a major hit in the United States with his recording of "If You Could Read My Mind". 

It sold over one million copies by early 1971, and was awarded a gold disc.

Lightfoot was a featured musical performer at the opening ceremonies of the 1988 Winter Olympic Games in Calgary, Alberta. He received an honorary Doctor of Laws degree (arts) in 1979, and the Companion of the Order of Canada—Canada's highest civilian honor — in 2003.

Joni Mitchell, CC  was born  with given  name Roberta Joan Anderson on November 7, 1943. She is a Canadian musician, singer songwriter, and painter. Mitchell began singing in small nightclubs in Saskatchewan and Western Canada and then busking in the streets and dives of Toronto.

In 1965 she moved to the United States and, touring constantly, began to be recognized when her original songs ("Urge for Going," "Chelsea Morning," "Both Sides, Now," "The Circle Game") were covered by notable folk singers, allowing her to sign with Reprise Records and record her own debut album in 1968.

Settling in Southern California, Mitchell and her popular songs like "Big Yellow Taxi" and "Woodstock" helped define an era and a generation. Her more starkly personal 1971 recording Blue has been called one of the best albums ever made.

Mitchell's wide-ranging vocals and her distinctive open-tuned guitar and piano compositions grew more harmonically and rhythmically complex as she explored jazz, melding it with her influences in rock n roll, R&B, classical music and non-western beats.

In March 1970 Joni Mitchell  get her first Grammy Award for Best Folk Performance. Musically restless, Mitchell switched labels and began moving toward jazz rhythms by way of lush pop textures on 1974's Court and Spark, her best-selling LP, featuring her radio hits "Help Me" and "Free Man in Paris."

With roots in visual art, she designed her own album artwork throughout her career.Now based in British Columbia, she describes herself as a "painter derailed by circumstance."

Mitchell has been deeply influential on fellow musicians in a diverse range of genres, and her work is highly respected by critics.Joni Mitchell may stand as the most important and influential female recording artist of the late 20th century and Rolling Stone called her "one of the greatest songwriters ever." Mitchell's lyrics have been noted for their offhand poetic imagery, addressing social and environmental ideals alongside individual feelings of romantic longing, confusion, disillusion and joy.

 

 

Anne Murray , with the complete name  is Morna Anne Murray was born on June 20, 1945, is a Canadian singer in pop, country and adult contemporary styles whose albums have sold over 54 million copies.

Anne Murray was the first Canadian female solo singer to reach #1 on the U.S. charts, and also the first to earn a Gold record for one of her signature songs, "Snowbird" (1970). She is often cited as the woman who paved the way for other Canadian international success stories .

Anne Murray is also the first woman and the first Canadian to win "Album of the Year" at the Country Music Association Awards for her 1984 album A Little Good News. In 2011, Billboard ranked her number 10 on their list of the 50 Biggest AC Artists Ever.

Anne Murray has received four Grammy Awards, 24 Juno Awards (she holds the record for the most Junos awarded to an artist), three American Music Awards, three Country Music Association Awards and three Canadian Country Music Association Awards.

Anne Murray has been inducted into the Canadian Country Music Hall of Fame, the Juno Hall of Fame, The Songwriters Hall of Fame and the Hit Parade Hall of Fame. She is a member of the Country Music Hall of Fame Walkway of Stars in Nashville, and has her own star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in Los Angeles and on Canada's Walk of Fame in Toronto.

 

 

Paul Anka , the complete name is Paul Albert Anka, was born July 30, 1941. He  is a Canadian singer, songwriter, and actor. Anka became a naturalized US citizen in 1990.

Anka first became famous as a teen idol in the late 1950s and 1960s with hit songs like "Diana", "Lonely Boy", and "Put Your Head on My Shoulder". Paul Anka went on to write such well-known music as the theme for The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson and one of Tom Jones's biggest hits, "She's a Lady", and the English lyrics for Frank Sinatra's signature song, "My Way" (originally French song "Comme d'habitude").

In 1983, Paul Anka co-wrote with Michael Jackson the song "I Never Heard", which was retitled and released in 2009 under the name "This Is It". An additional song that Jackson co-wrote with Anka from this 1983 session, "Love Never Felt So Good", has since been discovered, and will be released in the near future. The song was also released by Johnny Mathis in 1984.

Paul Anka wrote and performed songs in a 1985 Canadian children's Christmas cartoon, George and the Christmas Star.

In American Idol's Seasons 2 and 3, Paul Anka made a special appearance and sang an adapted version of "My Way" that mocked the format of the show, as well as participants, participants of past seasons, judges and the host. The performance was praised as "One of the Best Moments in American Idol" by several members of the cast.