"Take Me Home, Country Roads"

John Denver et. al

With “road” as our word of the week, I had some good choices, including a favorite of mine, a late Beatles number, “The Long and Winding Road.” But I’ve talked about that here already. Some of you may have expected Elton John’s “Goodbye, Yellow Brick Road” or even its inspiration, “Follow the Yellow Brick Road” from The Wizard of Oz. Or maybe a Ray Charles song came to mind? Let’s hold that last thought for a moment.

Today’s song takes me back to my very early teens, when my dear high school friend and I formed a guitar duo and did a little performing locally. We were heavily influenced by the folk music we grew up hearing, and so our repertoire included songs by Peter, Paul, and Mary, Bob Dylan, and any songs that featured fingerpicking accompaniment and tight harmonies. One of our favorite songs to do was “Carolina in My Mind” by James Taylor. And another was “Take Me Home, Country Roads,” our song of the week, written and sung by a fellow named Henry John Deutschendorf — that is, John Denver.

In his career, John Denver wrote about 300 songs and recorded 200 of them himself. That’s an fine record by any standard, but when you consider that the bulk of his recording success took place in a single decade, the 1970’s, it’s outstanding. One thing that can be said about John Denver is that he was determined on a career in music. And in the mid-1960’s he moved to California hoping to achieve just that. He had already been working at clubs and writing and promoting his own music when he decided to audition for a folk group called the Mitchell Trio, and he won! That gig opened to John Denver his first opportunity to make commercial recordings, which he did, in several albums with the Trio.

With the Mitchell Trio, John Denver was continuing to write music and perfecting his own skills as a musician and singer. The Trio were under the strong direction of a man named Milt Okun, a highly successful composer, arranger, and producer of folk music who happened also to be producing Peter, Paul, and Mary and developing their “sound.” Okun was responsible for renaming and arranging Denver’s song, “Babe, I Hate to Go,” to be released by Peter, Paul, and Mary as what would be their first and only #1 hit, “Leaving on a Jet Plane.” While he was at it, Okun also persuaded Henry Deutschendorf to change his name own name to … John Denver.

Ah, what IS in a name? Who can say for sure? But the new name was likely a very sound business decision. And who knew that this collaboration in 1969 would lead to John Denver’s becoming an “overnight” sensation on the popular music scene only a couple of years later? And what happened in those intervening two years? Well, the Mitchell Trio broke up, and John Denver went back to hawking his own music, and his own recordings, alone. It seems that he didn’t really relish working in a folk group, or any group. So he took his single act on the road across the country, lining up engagements for himself at every likely town along his way, often singing for free, or for donations, or for a chance to be interviewed on local radio, and perhaps to have one of his early recordings played on air. Evidently, he was so full of energy and good cheer that he made life-long fans on this self-promotion tour. And he steadily made his way East, and finally arrived in New York City, where the folk music scene was still alive and thriving.

John Denver might have remained just a traveling club singer/songwriter, except that one night, music promoter (and later, film producer) Jerry Weintraub happened to hear him singing at a little club in Greenwich Village. Weintraub offered John Denver a contract, and that was the big break. Weintraub was manager over the years for some very famous entertainers, including Elvis Presley, Frank Sinatra, The Four Seasons, Neil Diamond, Bob Dylan, Led Zeppelin, Three Dog Night, Jackson Browne, and The Carpenters, among many others. It was Weintraub who talked Frank Sinatra back from retirement in the 1960’s and transformed him from primarily a lounge singer to a stadium-filling concert singer. Without Jerry Weintraub’s vision, Sinatra might not have enjoyed that second — and immensely successful — career in the “autumn of his years.” Denver’s partnership with Jerry Weintraub was invaluable and long lasting.

So although Denver had had his first #1 hit as a songwriter in 1969 with Peter, Paul, and Mary and “Leaving on a Jet Plane,” his first Top 40 hit as a singer and performer came in 1971, with “Take Me Home, Country Roads.” The song reached #2 and stayed on the Top 40 Chart for 14 weeks. It took on a sort of a life of its own, as well. It immediately was covered by at least a dozen Country & Western singers, and this created a great audience for John Denver in that musical genre. His music was so loved among the C&W crowd that Denver was awarded Country Music’s Entertainer of the year award in 1975. “Take Me Home, Country Roads” was adopted as the state song by the West Virginia legislature. And it was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1988. (As an aside, another of Denver’s songs, “Rocky Mountain High,” was adopted as the state song of Colorado, the state which Denver himself made his permanent home, as well. That’s two state songs to his credit!) In his career, John Denver earned a combined total of 33 gold singles and gold albums and countless other awards. That’s not bad for a self-proclaimed “Country Boy.”

Look way below for a bonus Road Song!

Note: John Denver shares writing credits for “Country Roads” with Bill Danoff, Taffy Nivert.

“Babe, I Hate to Go.” John Denver, with the Mitchell Trio, 1967.

Bonus Song: “Hit the Road, Jack!” by the incomparable Ray Charles.

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