Ian Tyson's 'Long Trail' to the Sunday Edition

It became a classic - recorded by, among others, Judy Collins, John Denver, Johnny Cash, Neil Young and the Kingston Trio - and, of course, Ian & Sylvia.

"Four Strong Winds" was the first song Ian Tyson ever wrote. It began its life on a rainy fall afternoon in 1962, in a dingy New York flat where he'd camped out to try his hand at song writing.

Ian Tyson was so inexperienced he says he wouldn't have known a metaphor from a prairie gopher, but he wrote the song while nursing a crush on a beautiful woman who'd bruised his heart - out of which came lyric magic.

Ian Tyson's been a songwriter for over half a century and a cowboy for longer than that. Since putting his first song on paper he's indulged his second passion as a cowboy. It was a bug he caught early and has never lost.

This fall he's come out with a new memoir, The Long Trail, My Life in the West. This week, Ian Tyson joined Michael in our studio in Toronto.