A white-hatted mythologizer, Ian Tyson championed the western side of country and romanticized the very life he lived
– a stately balladic lament in E major and a Canadian-set expression of romantic sorrow – in about a half an hour. It was his first attempt at creating his own song. A friend of his, Bob Dylan, had just written. Inspired by Mr. Dylan’s imagery, Mr. Tyson wrote an instant classic as a self-challenge: “How hard can this be?” he thought.
Mr. Tyson, one half of the influential folk music revivalists Ian and Sylvia and a life-long embodiment of cowboy pride, died at his spread in southern Alberta on Dec. 29, after a series of health complications. The Victoria native was 89, and had underwent open heart surgery in 2015. Mr. Tyson, the charismatic and irascible boot-wearing baritone with matinee idol looks, was inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame in 1992, alongside his by-then former wife. Eleven years later he won a Governor-General’s Performing Arts Award, and he is a member of the Order of Canada. The Washington Post once hailed him as “Canada’s cool cowboy.”
There was a bit of Bach, a bit of Henry VIII , some Schubert and a psalm, but not a hint of a guitar as Tyson and Fricker were married in Toronto on June 26, 1964.Mr. Tyson dearly loved his ranch, the T-Bar-Y in Longview, Alta. He was fond of Navajo rugs, Mexican tiles and 6 a.m. coffee.
Ian Dawson Tyson was born on Sept. 25, 1933, on Vancouver Island. He shared a middle name with his father, George Tyson, who had emigrated from England to Alberta, where he found work as a ranch hand in Bowden. In turn, the future Ms. Tyson was struck by his handsomeness. “But it was not love at first sight,” she told biographer Mr. Einarson. “I didn’t think of it in terms of becoming a relationship.”
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