Canadian folk music icon Ian Tyson dies at 89

Ian Tyson, the Canadian folk legend turned cowboy storyteller who penned “Four Strong Winds” as one half of Ian & Sylvia, has died at age 89.

The Victoria native died Thursday at his ranch in southern Alberta following a series of ongoing health complications, according to his manager Paul Mascioli.

The Victoria native was a part of the influential folk movement in Toronto with his first wife, Sylvia Tyson. But he divided much of his life and career between two passions largely unrelated to his folkie past: living on his Alberta ranch and pursuing songs about the cowboy life.

Tyson’s ex-wife and collaborator Sylvia Tyson remembered him as a “versatile” and “very serious songwriter.”

“He put a lot of time and energy into his songwriting and felt his material very strongly, especially the whole cowboy lifestyle,” she told The Canadian Press on Thursday.

“Ian and I were apart for a lot longer than we were together,” she added.

“And aside from making some great music we made some wonderful friends and got to play in a lot of wonderful places.”

Born Sept. 25, 1933 to parents who emigrated from England, Tyson didn’t appear to have a hardscrabble upbringing. He attended private school and learned to play polo before discovering the rodeo.

Once he graduated from the Vancouver School of Art in 1958, Tyson hitchhiked to Toronto. He was swept up in the city’s burgeoning folk movement, where Canuck legends including Gordon Lightfoot, Neil Young and Joni Mitchell would eventually ply their talents in smoke-filled hippie coffee houses in the bohemian Yorkville neighbourhood.

Tyson soon met a kindred spirit named Sylvia Fricker and they began a relationship — onstage and off — in 1959. They moved to New York together where they met manager Albert Grossman — who steered Peter, Paul and Mary and would soon count Bob Dylan as a client. He signed Ian & Sylvia to Vanguard Records.

Their self-titled debut was released in 1962, a collection of mostly traditional songs. Their second album, 1964’s “Four Strong Winds,” was the duo’s breakthrough, thanks in large part to its wistful title track, one of the only original compositions on the album.

The pair married in 1964 and continued releasing new records with regularity (their ’65 album “Early Morning Rain” included a composition by Lightfoot, who was then far from a household name). But as the popularity of folk waned, the duo moved to Nashville and began integrating strains of country and rock into their sound.

In 1969, the Tysons explored that new fusion by forming the country-rock outfit Great Speckled Bird, whose influential self-titled debut dropped in ’70.

They had a child, Clay, in 1968 but the couple grew apart as their career began to stall in the ’70s and they divorced in 1975.

Tyson then decided to move back West and return to ranch life, training horses and cowboying in Pincher Creek, Alta. These experiences increasingly filtered through his songwriting, particularly on 1983’s “Old Corrals and Sagebrush.”

Though the album was his third solo release, it was his first devoted entirely to Western material. Tyson had modest expectations for the album, but it was clear he was discovering his voice: he sang clear-eyed but idyllic tunes about life on the ranch.

Tyson’s move toward traditional Western music happened at an opportune moment: 1983 also marked the inaugural Elko Cowboy Poetry Gathering in Nevada, evidence of the burgeoning interest in cowboy culture.

Tyson’s self-released 1987 album, “Cowboyography,” became a surprising word-of-mouth hit and rejuvenated Tyson’s touring career in Canada and the U.S.

He also picked up numerous awards for his music throughout his career, including an induction into the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2019.

In 1987, he won a Juno Award for country male vocalist of the year and five years later he was inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame alongside Sylvia Tyson. He won a Governor General’s Performing Arts Award in 2003, and has been named to the Order of Canada and the Canadian Country Music Hall of Fame.

Tyson continued to release music late into his career, including the 2015 album “Carnero Vaquero” and the 2017 single “You Should Have Known.”

But doctor’s exams related to a heart attack and subsequent open-heart surgery in 2015 left permanent damage to his voice. That didn’t necessarily slow him down.

Tyson continued to perform live concerts, including a series of shows with country performer Corb Lund in 2018 that marked a celebration of cowboy songs and stories. His heart problems returned and forced him to cancel an August appearance that year.

Despite the setbacks, he continued to play his guitar at home.

“I think that’s the key to my hanging in there because you’ve gotta use it or lose it,” he said a year after the cancellation.

“When you get to a certain age in life, which I’ve attained and probably passed, it’s hard to stay fairly sharp with the instrument. But I’ve committed myself to doing that. It’s paying off, I’m playing pretty good, in spite of all the broken bones and so on over the years.”