A few weeks ago, on a slow afternoon in my office, a running gag started among the few staffers on duty about "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald."

Could the ship really have made it to Whitefish Bay? Why couldn't the cook feed the crew? And was the cook called Cookie, as cooks so often are?

It was lighthearted banter that poked fun at the song, but I couldn't help but notice that everyone in the office that day, young or old, was able to pull lines easily from memory. And it occurred to me that, while it's easy today to write Gordon Lightfoot off as a constant presence on easy listening and "lite rock" radio stations, his songs can be hard to forget.

So I dug out a copy of Gordon Lightfoot's Complete Greatest Hits, a 2002 Rhino collection, and found that, once I had it spinning, the disc simply did not want to stop.

The album covers Lightfoot's career from 1965 to 1987, with 20 tracks from his years with United Artists, Reprise and Warner Bros. There are a few songs this collection overlooks, and one or two that could have been dropped, but overall it's an excellent retrospective of a storied music career.

Truly, Lightfoot is known much better as a songwriter than he is a singer. His songs have been performed by the likes of Bob Dylan, Elvis Presley, Ian & Sylvia Tyson, Anne Murray, Glen Campbell, Olivia Newton-John, Barbra Streisand, the Kingston Trio, Harry Belafonte, Richie Havens, Judy Collins, Sarah McLachlan, Johnny Cash, Tony Rice, Tori Amos and Peter, Paul & Mary, among many others. But on this album, it's 100 percent Lightfoot.

And he's no slouch in the singing department, either. In addition to "Edmund Fitzgerald" -- truly one of pop-folk's most haunting ballads -- there's "Sundown" and "If You Could Read My Mind" -- his own recording of the song in 1971 hit the Top Ten, better than numerous other versions that have been made. And, while songs such as "Early Morning Rain" and the loosely mysogynistic "For Lovin' Me" certainly stick in the craw, I found myself hooking more onto lesser-known songs like "Canadian Railroad Trilogy," "Rainy Day People" and "Daylight Katy." His warm, easygoing voice and laidback, hard-to-forget melodies slip easily into the background, but also stand up to concentrated scrutiny.

Stan Rogers, one of Canada's greatest songwriters, didn't receive his full measure of acclaim until after his unfortunate death. Lightfoot, although he spent two months in a coma in 2002, is still making music as he moves into his seventh decade. Let's make sure he gets the attention he deserves while he can enjoy it.