Indeed! Fellow musicians referred to him simply as "The Genius."
A cursory search indicates that Charles hired the backup singers in 1958, a group called The Raelettes. Apparently he produced some solo singles for the group later in the 60s, which indicates they were given better treatment than some other session vocalists.
He was that, for sure. I count "Georgia on My Mind" in the category "Sublime." Yes, I recall now that those gals were his OWN backup singers. And they sang like a force to be reckoned with!
that's so sweet! you and Tony deserve each other each being such delightful people and so complementary, to pile on to one of your hubby's common themes.
my summer aspiration is to take up blues harmonica. i've lined up several good recordings to jam with and i've got the harp (though yet to unbox it). i want to wait until it's really air conditioner season so i don't bother my neighbors too much before i'm competent.
Gregg, I wrote a long reply to your comment, but my (failing) computer demolished it. You are kind! Tony and I are really a team, and that's kind of a treasure. I said in my now vanished reply that I played a little harmonica a bit, too, and had one of those wire things you wear about your neck to hold the harmonica and leave your hands free for the guitar, even. But I like singing too much, so my harmonica phase didn't last. It's quite an underrated instrument. I hope you have a great summer playin' the blues on your harp!
I wonder if I can perhaps veer off into a Stanleyesque direction about the lyrics and how, at one point, they "link to" or are (say I, at least) enhanced by a curious aspect of the melody? It occurs during the last line of the break where he sings, "...and driving down the road I get a feeling that I should have been home yesterday...."
See (and again, this is me doing my math-nerd thing, or whatever it is :-) ), the "important" words there fall (as they should) on the down beats (1 and 3). Well, all except for one case. Here is that line again with the words on the down beat in upper case to emphasize them visually:
DRIVing DOWN the ROAD i GET a FEELing THAT i SHOULD've BEEN home YESTerDAY..."
And the exceptional case (again, to me -- no one I've mentioned it to has ever noticed it, and most, I admit, tend to look a bit askance at my observation after I point it out to them, so whatever :-) ) is in that phrase "been home." For, to me, the key important word there is "HOME" rather than "BEEN," so that sonically, it should rather have been something like "i SHOULD've HOME been Yesterday..."
But of course that is pretty syntactically awkward, so it needed to be "been home" instead.
BUT -- and this is, to me, the wonderful part: the important word "home" instead, comes late, AFTER the down beat. And that is EXACTLY what the meaning of the line itself is telling us about being home, ie, that he (the singer) was "late" and SHOULD have been home yesterday, just as the word HOME was late in getting to that down beat where it should have been.
Ok, make of it what you will. I've been accused by many friends (including my wife Angelee, though I DID convince her about this one back then :-) ) of seeing things that weren't there often enough in the past in various other aesthetic observations about art. (I will add that it's also not something I "looked for," but rather, something that "jumped out at me" unbidden. Just the way my brain works, I guess... :-) )
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One other thing: other comments here mentioned the hints of Christian thought in various songs that skirt the edge of being theological, and one of my favorite examples is something that only struck me a few years ago, even though I had heard it a million times in the past. In his wonderful song "Matthew," he obviously makes direct reference in a late verse:
He lost the farm and lost his family
He lost the wheat and lost his home
But he found the family Bible
A faith as solid as a stone
But the thing that only suddenly struck me a few years ago was in the chorus itself:
Yes, and joy was just the thing that he was raised on
Love was just a way to live and die
Gold was just a windy Kansas wheatfield
Blue, just a Kansas summer sky
That second line, "Love was just a way to live and die" is an almost perfect description of Christ dying for us on the cross.
(Hope I haven't gone on too long here. I haven't posted replies here in ages, so maybe I'm making up for lost time?... :-) )
Stanley, I'll have to ponder this. I don't scan the line the way you do, of course. I would put the stress this way (as a singer): DRIVE-ing downth' / ROAD I getta/ FEELin' that i / SHOULD a-been 'ome / YESterday / YES TER DAY-AY-AY. I'm not sure if that helps or harms your analysis .. but that's how everyone actually sang the song, including me! (I miss Angelee. She was a treasure, and I'm only saying what you know better than anyone else.)
I've always understood meter to be composed of either two (eg, iambic) or three (eg, dactylic) syllables. It would seem (and what I hear) that four (or even more) syllables typically and "naturally" fall into two sets of two (or three) syllables, even though the first of the pair may be more emphasized than the second pair (or triplets as the case may be for, say, hexameter and such).
And so I hear "BEEN home" emphasized iambically too, even though the "SHOULD a-" might usefully be also displayed in bold font all-caps for a bit more emphasis than the "BEEN home" iamb. And, just to play into my wordplay, I might suggest that in fact, the "SHOULD a-" iamb SHOULD be emphasized a bit more than the "BEEN home" iamb since the "active" singer's negligence is the more important part of the phrase than the more passive homestead that the singer is trying to reach.
And of course this is all pretty subtle stuff at the end of the day. But one of my go-to aesthetic "rules" is that hammers pounding down over one's head CAN be useful on occasion. But it is the more subtle niceties of poetic construction (and of just about any aesthetic constructions) that I would say provide the greatest overall impact of an artistic endeavor (and of course something can also simply be TOO subtle to have an appreciable effect, so there is that danger on the other side too).
And of course all of this is primarily my inner mathematician child piping up I suppose. In that light, I'm thinking, for example, that, say, the numeric 34-33-33=100 perfections of Dante's cantos in the Divine Comedy might begin to fall into that over-subtle aspect (and of course that means I LOVE it for that reason :-)
And yes, missing Angelee. In fact, I could see her rolling her eyes at my paragraphs above, even as I was typing them :-) . Thanks for putting up with me and my occasional analytic machinations. We now return you to your regularly scheduled Word & Song entry...
Stanley, I was noting how the stresses fall out as the music is SUNG. Basically the meter of the lyric is trochaic, with the stress on the first syllable : ALL/most HEA/ven, WEST/Vir GIN/ia, BLUE/ridge MOUN/tain, SHEN/an DO/ah RIV/er. But if you actually stuck slavishly to that beat as a singer, you'd end up sounding .. well .. "sing-songy." So there's a bit of play that comes into the mix on the performance end of popular song, and also in the musical notation, in which meter is about following a time signature, fitting (in this case what is called common time) 4 beats to a measure. In music, however, lyric syllables can be as long or short as the musical notation allows, and that allows adding stress (of a sort) by holding any part of a work for as long or as briefly as you wish. The lyrics have to fit the musical meter, of course, and how well they do that often makes he difference between a beautifully fluid song and a mechanically jerky one. The way to tell that the lyric (alone, not sung) is trochaic here is to think of how the stresses would look if they were, say, iambic, with he stress falling on second, rather than first. al/MOST hea/VEN, west/VIR gin/YA, blue/RIDGE moun/TAIN, shen/AN/do/AH ri/VER. You see that the stresses just can't fall that way and sound sensible in English. Now there is my effort to analyze what to me is just so natural as to defy definition. I just want to hear the music and let it roll!
Another enjoyable article! I do want to support a local DC musician, though: I think that “Take Me Home, Country Roads” was written almost entirely by Bill and Taffy Danoff (“Fat City”, and 1/2 of “The Starland Vocal Band”)with only a small amount of input from John Denver. Bill Danoff says the song was nearly completed when he played it for John Denver with whom he was appearing at a Washington, DC club. He later worried that he had erroneously put the Blue Ridge Mountains in West VA (they are there, barely).
There's a case to be made that at the very least John Denver had a LOT of help with that song. I heard, also, that there were some scurrilous lyrics in the original that were removed? And yes, the Blue Ridge Mountains are more properly a feature of Virginia -- but the meter required a strong single syllable, so we can allow some "poetic license" there. As for the Starland Vocal Band, I did also recall that those two wrote a (to me) tiresome song called "Afternoon Delight." Maybe the song's problem was that the DJ's played it too often? Overkill. What I did learn that I didn't know before was how much the two producers had to do with John Denver's success -- and the success of a number of acts about a mile long. And it sure did explain the similarity in the arrangement of the song as done by Peter, Paul, and Mary and THEN John Denver. There was a lot of great talent in those years, and some folks who were star-makers, too.
I didn’t hear anything about scurrilous lyrics—perhaps true, given the lyrics to “Afternoon Delight”. Bill Danoff did say that he had briefly considered using Massachusetts (his home state) as his topic but decided to change it to West Virginia, another 4 syllable state. At that point in his life he had never been to WV but he did have friends from there. Neither he nor his (ex-)wife would remember me at all, but I did talk to them a few times. A school friend was a member of the Starland Vocal Band and several of us went to their concerts to support him in particular. Bill Danoff was invariably friendly and willing to chat with his bandmate’s teenaged friends.
When I was a kid, most of the music I heard at home was either Jazz or Classical...but there were a handful of other albums which were family favorites, among them the live, 2 album set, An Evening With John Denver....Another was an album titled 'Bobbie Gentry and Glen Campbell'.
In general, I do not like live recordings at all, by anyone--this album set was a RARE exception...to the point where I actually prefer these live recording of Denver's music over the studio albums. I've actually seen commentators state that this album is one of the best, if not THE best live recording...IN ANY GENRE!
And in this recording, he covered the McCartney/Lennon song 'Mother Nature's Son'.............The set closes with the song, 'This Old Guitar', about which I've often wondered if it took any inspiration from George Harrisons's fantastic 'While My Guitar Gently Weeps' (in a VERY general sense.)
I still listen to John Denver a lot, including all of his Christmas recordings, including the Muppets.
Haha! I never saw John Denver live, but I agree with you, I don't generally like live albums. But with him, I heard that he was really great with audiences and a complete natural on stage. I'll have to give a listen to that album. I also liked that he wasn't above doing other artists' work. I can say from personal experience that a guitarist comes to LOVE his guitar, I think in a way that isn't quite the same for, say, a pianist. Guitars have their own unique sounds, and they mellow as they age. Right now my beloved Guild D25 is in sick bay, with a loose bridge -- unplayable. I can't find a luthier hereabouts (we had one, but he is long retired) .. so I bought a Zager to fill in. I love the Zager, but I miss my Guild. I can say that hearing this song just immediately lifted my spirits -- and so his music did lift spirits, at least until he turned to politics. I'm not fond of musicians who go all political. I just want the music pure!
My family were first settlers in the Shenandoah Valley of VA and also in what is now WV. My grandfather took me to the old homesites, forts on the outskirts of 18th century civilization. I’ve drunk from the springs that sustained those early settlers as we visited their graves. I belong to the societies for the preservation of their memory. I am proud of my heritage.
My attachment to these mountains is strong and when we lived away I constantly felt the tug of them in my heart. As you know we have retired back home to The Valley, back for me anyway, my husband is originally from Texas, and I am rejoicing to be home.
BTW for those who don’t know, the Shenandoah River is actually in Virginia.
After he retired and interested in the 200 birthday of the USA, my grandfather decided to research the family. He would load my grandmother and me into the car and off we’d go. Courthouses in those days were not digitized and the records were originals in large heavy books stored in musty old basements. Gloves were not required when touching them. Historians of today would gasp in alarm. The clerk would take you to the storage room which, if you were lucky, had a table and a couple of chairs and turn you loose to explore. I was my grandfather’s research assistant. I learnt so much from him including the ability to decipher 18th century manuscripts quickly and accurately. :)
My grandmother didn’t involve herself in that aspect of the trips. She would bring a sandwich, a thermos of coffee, a magazine or two, and some peanuts, find herself a bench on the courthouse square, read the magazines as she watched the people go by and treat herself to a leisurely lunch, offering peanuts to any squirrels who approached.
Those were glorious days and such dear memories! I miss my grandparents terribly.
Thank you Debra for the stroll down memory lane on the country roads of my past. <3
Karen, those are glorious memories. I miss my grandparents, too. I came along when they were too old to travel much, but my granny took care of me often while my mother worked. My grandfather had a work shed where I got to go and watch him, and I also "helped" with planting seeds for his flower bed along the front walk. And my granny showed me how to pluck chickens! (As a kid this didn't bother me, haha.)
You know that I consider the Blue Ridge "almost heaven," right? God's country!
I.know it! John "Denver" wasn't from Colorado, either, but at least he lived there eventually. I guess that "poetic license" applies here. He needed an extra syllable to fill out the meter, and it had to be a strong one. I doubt he had ever been east when he collaborated on that lyric!
Some also said “Welcome to Wild and Wonderful West Virginia!”
A friend and I drove across the US to Utah. We were both excited to see our own dear mountains upon our return east. The Rockies are impressive, but ours are prettier in comparison. Ours are lush, dense and green. Homey! Welcoming! Much preferable to my friend and I. :) Kudzu and all. ;)
Speaking of kudzu, in the 1980s an elderly woman was featured in the Atlanta Constitution Journal for single handedly clearing her old family homestead of kudzu. Just one elderly woman with her hoe, it took five years to clear every bit from her five acres. We used to see her out with her hoe as we drove by to get on 400, but didn’t know anything about her before the article in the AJC. Her family had lived on that property for generations. She’s gone now and her house replaced with condos. :( I hope she is not forgotten.
Home, your memories and those of the people who came before are important!
Oh, that lady and the war against the kudzu! Good old stubbornness takes you a long way -- in a worthy cause! Condos! They have been built up the side of the Hackettstown Mountain, in the valley of which my hometown was nestled. I love the East coast mountains (my parents retired to the Poconos, and the Appalachian Trail was a roadside attraction where they lifed), and I am very happy here in New Hampshire at the foot of Mt. Kearsarge, with the White Mountains to the north of us. Landscape matters!! And oh! how I hate the encroachment on the rural countryside by high-density housing.
Having grown up and spent most of my life in Denver i've heard a whole lot of him - any live sporting event will include at least one and often more of his songs. he was a favorite in the 70s, after which my tastes went more to the edgy. such an innocence to his voice! he did influence my screen name: like him my surname is a cumbersome one, so i just placed my hometown before my Christian name. i've been using that appellation for nigh on 30 years now.
Well, I did wonder about the name, and now I know! Sounds like you made a good choice of a stage name, too -- and deserved it more than John Deutschendorf did -- though as an adoptive Coloradan, it sounds like he earned it, too. As a musician, you will enjoy hearing that in my crazy youth I followed a drummer friend of mine to his hometown, Nashville. While I was there I had some singing (and other) adventures. My friend was working in Skeeter Davis's backup band in those days, so I got many chances to be backstage at the Grand Ole Opry, and at one point Skeeter asked me to be her backup singer. (I am an alto and a natural harmonist -- that's why I love folk music so much, and songs by people like John Denver and James Taylor and adopted their style of finger picking.) I turned Skeeter down, mainly because I had detoured from college long enough and decided to get back to that! Good thing I did, or else I wouldn't be here now, since I met Tony in grad school at UNC Chapel Hill. I could've been a washed up band singer instead! As another John Denver "aside," my very talented guitarist singing partner in Nashville and I did audition for Opryland while I was there, and we sang "Annie's Song." We were good! But "the powers" chose a Donny and Marie cloned pair instead -- and they sang "That's Why I'm Leavin' it Up to You-ooo-ooo!" They were hired. I think the Lord wanted me to meet Tony! My singing buddy, Monty, went on to make a great little career for himself -- in a local vein -- as an extra fine Bluegrass mandolin player.
Monica, I have super-lousy recording devices these days. I might see if I can dig up an old tape -- IF I can -- from the glory days (such modest glory as there was, anyhow).
Gregg, you know my joke? Heaven is the place where the altos get to sing the melody. I honed my harmony skills out of necessity. Nowadays I am singing from the choir loft (with no "choir," only me and my daughter trying to lead a small congregation against my son's very loud pipe organ -- and I have to pretend to be a soprano! Ouch.
Proud to say that I saw him in concert at The Greek Theatre in LA (beautiful open air amphitheater) and he performed with a small orchestra on stage. He was so personable and friendly- never distant like some performers are. What a lovely night that was! Great choice among so many road songs!
Of course many of us are proud that we share an "Air Force brat" heritage with Mr. Denver. Military kids (we have two!) are often multi-talented, well-rounded, and have learned to be alone with themselves...and happy! But more to the point, as one of our favorite singers of our generation, and having been Christ followers since early teenagers, my wife and I often talk about how song writers and singers of his genre seem to walk right up to the edge of sacred-ness. Just imagine how powerful his music would have been if his words about beauty, nature, mountains, seas, love, friendship, and even "this old guitar" would have been if surrendered to the Holy, Triune God of creation! He was just so close at times!!
Scott, I'm taking in that message, and adding a hearty "amen" to it. Music is an extraordinary gift from the Lord to his created beings. They "music of the spheres" is an apt term for what that gift will be in the world to come. It's certainly true that (real) music elevates the soul and persists in the memory in a really transcendent way. We can hope to find out that John Denver may have reached out to his Maker when his plane was going down. Lord, have mercy. And we can be grateful for having had music such as his to elevate our own spirits.
Monica, you did nail it here. I considered the song, but didn't recall Frank's version, and it is grand! I think I could write an entire Substack just from that Chairman of the Board!
This album (A Swingin' Affair) is the ONLY Sinatra album I actually listen to, aside from one of his Christmas recordings...............never been a fan of that kind of music for the most part.
AW, Mark!!! You don't love Old Blue Eyes??? The best singer of the 20th century -- as recognized by THE best singer of the age, Luciano Pavarotti??? I have to sit down!!
Just teasing! And Francis Albert could swing, for sure.
Not so much don't like HIM, as I don't like that style of music/singing....Christmas music excepted.
However, there is also "High Society"---with Sinatra as a pathetic replacement for Jimmy Stewart, Crosby for Cary Grant and Grace Kelly for Kathrine Hepburn........I mean, come on............sort of like (and forgive the cheek) comparing the Catholic Mass with a Protestant "service".
It's nice that the Ray Charles clip showed the back-up singers. Such talented vocalists greatly enhanced a number of popular songs in the 1960s, often anonymously. Sometimes they would receive merely session fees for their essential contributions to the hit records.
The interplay between Ray Charles and his back-up singers is stellar! I can see how much fun they were having. Along with so many other things, singing can be FUN!🥰
Excellent. Lots of memories. Apparently Take Me Home has enjoyed a renaissance among the younger set. Before I retired and moved back to Central NY, I was teaching at a charter school in California that was about 90% Latino. One morning, as I was prepping for first period, I heard voices raised in song coming from common area where the kids hung out before school. Six 11th graders were singing Take Me Home, Country Roads. Hard to imagine a more unlikely anthem for these lads, but they loved it and sang it periodically through the rest of the school year.it
Wow! An unlikely anthem, indeed. But it makes me happy for great music to find new audiences. The young folks need to be absolutely immersed in music all the time. As parents, we have the power to do this for our kids AT HOME .. but the chain was broken somewhere along the line .. and now there's not the natural passage of great music from one generation to the next. THAT's sad.
You're right. When I taught 8th graders (2012-14), I had a girl named Natalie who insisted that there had been no good music since 1979. Her Walkman was filled with the Beatles, the Supremes, the Shirelles, etc. Then there was this video, which "went viral" about a year ago of a middle school teacher getting a request to play Take Me Home. Her reaction is priceless as the kids join in: https://www.facebook.com/bill.warford.9/videos/313127327889516
Wow, I am floored. What I saw and heard was kind of bittersweet, however. That teacher didn't know the music. How the kids did is beyond me, but what I also heard was the modern ailment of (literal) tone-deafness. A friend of ours pointed this out to us in a restaurant about 30 years ago, when the practice of having wait staff sing "happy birthday" to patrons was catching on. Our friend said that the young folks -- back then -- could recognize only two notes: up and down. And that they were otherwise unable to "sing." He was right. Shortly after that my 6-year-old daughter joined the Girl Scouts, and at summer camp, I'd pick her up at the end of the day, and the girls met to retire the flag and to sing. But they didn't sing. They shouted the words, and it was utterly . . well .. tuneless. Somewhere between my school days and that time, real music fell out of the curriculum. We homeschooled our kids, and I ran a folk song sing-along class for awhile. What I found is that most of the homeschooled kids could sing, but that neither they nor the parents knew ANY folk songs -- that a generation earlier everyone knew. I had to literally introduce kids AND parents to "Polly Wolly Doodle" and "Jimmy Crack Corn," and "When Johnny Comes Marching Home." Alas! We need to take back the music and pass it along again!
It's a very "real" song, and as you say evocative. Who hasn't had this sort of experience? The song speaks to the soul. The desire to "go home" is as natural to human beings as breathing is. Glad you enjoyed this one!
Fantastic musical selections! Songs I grew up with. I fondly remember our station-wagon of recently graduated seniors, driven by Fr. Ed Heile, singing this song, somewhere in Kansas, as we headed home to Kentucky, after being on the Colorado River for ten days, in July, '71. Thanks, Debra.
That's a great memory, John! A few years after that I was on a 5-week tour of Continental Europe with my high school guidance counselor (from Holland) and a two bus-loads of us kids, taking the grand tour for five weeks. That's where I firmed up my guitar skills, because a few of us had brought along guitars! We literally sang our way across Europe, folk songs all the way. "Take My Home, Country Roads" was a favorite, of course. Thanks for inspiring a good memory of my own!
One of the many blessings of music (and of the films, poems, and books, which you and Dr. Tony have featured here) is the unlocking of cherished memories and associated emotions, through a familiar lyric or melody Thanks for sharing that wonderful part of your life, when you and your fellow-traveling troubadours roamed the Old World. I imagine you all touched the lives of people there, who also remember. This song of a home-place, which you chose, has inspired the memories of many member of Word and Song.
John, I'm so glad to be able to inspire some great memories! The music itself actually is an aid to the memory. In discussing the old songs I also (and my family) bet a boost memory of things we haven't thought of in a long time. So many of the tunes I share remind me of my mother, who instilled in me a love of the American Standards -- songs that are just tremendous works of art. My only regret with doing Word & Song is that my own guitar sits in the case more often than not, just because I'm so busy. BUT listening to these great old tunes and sharing them is a labor of love for me. And I think of Sometimes a Song as a tribute to my mother.
Indeed! Fellow musicians referred to him simply as "The Genius."
A cursory search indicates that Charles hired the backup singers in 1958, a group called The Raelettes. Apparently he produced some solo singles for the group later in the 60s, which indicates they were given better treatment than some other session vocalists.
He was that, for sure. I count "Georgia on My Mind" in the category "Sublime." Yes, I recall now that those gals were his OWN backup singers. And they sang like a force to be reckoned with!
that's so sweet! you and Tony deserve each other each being such delightful people and so complementary, to pile on to one of your hubby's common themes.
my summer aspiration is to take up blues harmonica. i've lined up several good recordings to jam with and i've got the harp (though yet to unbox it). i want to wait until it's really air conditioner season so i don't bother my neighbors too much before i'm competent.
Gregg, I wrote a long reply to your comment, but my (failing) computer demolished it. You are kind! Tony and I are really a team, and that's kind of a treasure. I said in my now vanished reply that I played a little harmonica a bit, too, and had one of those wire things you wear about your neck to hold the harmonica and leave your hands free for the guitar, even. But I like singing too much, so my harmonica phase didn't last. It's quite an underrated instrument. I hope you have a great summer playin' the blues on your harp!
I wonder if I can perhaps veer off into a Stanleyesque direction about the lyrics and how, at one point, they "link to" or are (say I, at least) enhanced by a curious aspect of the melody? It occurs during the last line of the break where he sings, "...and driving down the road I get a feeling that I should have been home yesterday...."
See (and again, this is me doing my math-nerd thing, or whatever it is :-) ), the "important" words there fall (as they should) on the down beats (1 and 3). Well, all except for one case. Here is that line again with the words on the down beat in upper case to emphasize them visually:
DRIVing DOWN the ROAD i GET a FEELing THAT i SHOULD've BEEN home YESTerDAY..."
And the exceptional case (again, to me -- no one I've mentioned it to has ever noticed it, and most, I admit, tend to look a bit askance at my observation after I point it out to them, so whatever :-) ) is in that phrase "been home." For, to me, the key important word there is "HOME" rather than "BEEN," so that sonically, it should rather have been something like "i SHOULD've HOME been Yesterday..."
But of course that is pretty syntactically awkward, so it needed to be "been home" instead.
BUT -- and this is, to me, the wonderful part: the important word "home" instead, comes late, AFTER the down beat. And that is EXACTLY what the meaning of the line itself is telling us about being home, ie, that he (the singer) was "late" and SHOULD have been home yesterday, just as the word HOME was late in getting to that down beat where it should have been.
Ok, make of it what you will. I've been accused by many friends (including my wife Angelee, though I DID convince her about this one back then :-) ) of seeing things that weren't there often enough in the past in various other aesthetic observations about art. (I will add that it's also not something I "looked for," but rather, something that "jumped out at me" unbidden. Just the way my brain works, I guess... :-) )
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One other thing: other comments here mentioned the hints of Christian thought in various songs that skirt the edge of being theological, and one of my favorite examples is something that only struck me a few years ago, even though I had heard it a million times in the past. In his wonderful song "Matthew," he obviously makes direct reference in a late verse:
He lost the farm and lost his family
He lost the wheat and lost his home
But he found the family Bible
A faith as solid as a stone
But the thing that only suddenly struck me a few years ago was in the chorus itself:
Yes, and joy was just the thing that he was raised on
Love was just a way to live and die
Gold was just a windy Kansas wheatfield
Blue, just a Kansas summer sky
That second line, "Love was just a way to live and die" is an almost perfect description of Christ dying for us on the cross.
(Hope I haven't gone on too long here. I haven't posted replies here in ages, so maybe I'm making up for lost time?... :-) )
Stanley, I'll have to ponder this. I don't scan the line the way you do, of course. I would put the stress this way (as a singer): DRIVE-ing downth' / ROAD I getta/ FEELin' that i / SHOULD a-been 'ome / YESterday / YES TER DAY-AY-AY. I'm not sure if that helps or harms your analysis .. but that's how everyone actually sang the song, including me! (I miss Angelee. She was a treasure, and I'm only saying what you know better than anyone else.)
I've always understood meter to be composed of either two (eg, iambic) or three (eg, dactylic) syllables. It would seem (and what I hear) that four (or even more) syllables typically and "naturally" fall into two sets of two (or three) syllables, even though the first of the pair may be more emphasized than the second pair (or triplets as the case may be for, say, hexameter and such).
And so I hear "BEEN home" emphasized iambically too, even though the "SHOULD a-" might usefully be also displayed in bold font all-caps for a bit more emphasis than the "BEEN home" iamb. And, just to play into my wordplay, I might suggest that in fact, the "SHOULD a-" iamb SHOULD be emphasized a bit more than the "BEEN home" iamb since the "active" singer's negligence is the more important part of the phrase than the more passive homestead that the singer is trying to reach.
And of course this is all pretty subtle stuff at the end of the day. But one of my go-to aesthetic "rules" is that hammers pounding down over one's head CAN be useful on occasion. But it is the more subtle niceties of poetic construction (and of just about any aesthetic constructions) that I would say provide the greatest overall impact of an artistic endeavor (and of course something can also simply be TOO subtle to have an appreciable effect, so there is that danger on the other side too).
And of course all of this is primarily my inner mathematician child piping up I suppose. In that light, I'm thinking, for example, that, say, the numeric 34-33-33=100 perfections of Dante's cantos in the Divine Comedy might begin to fall into that over-subtle aspect (and of course that means I LOVE it for that reason :-)
And yes, missing Angelee. In fact, I could see her rolling her eyes at my paragraphs above, even as I was typing them :-) . Thanks for putting up with me and my occasional analytic machinations. We now return you to your regularly scheduled Word & Song entry...
Stanley, I was noting how the stresses fall out as the music is SUNG. Basically the meter of the lyric is trochaic, with the stress on the first syllable : ALL/most HEA/ven, WEST/Vir GIN/ia, BLUE/ridge MOUN/tain, SHEN/an DO/ah RIV/er. But if you actually stuck slavishly to that beat as a singer, you'd end up sounding .. well .. "sing-songy." So there's a bit of play that comes into the mix on the performance end of popular song, and also in the musical notation, in which meter is about following a time signature, fitting (in this case what is called common time) 4 beats to a measure. In music, however, lyric syllables can be as long or short as the musical notation allows, and that allows adding stress (of a sort) by holding any part of a work for as long or as briefly as you wish. The lyrics have to fit the musical meter, of course, and how well they do that often makes he difference between a beautifully fluid song and a mechanically jerky one. The way to tell that the lyric (alone, not sung) is trochaic here is to think of how the stresses would look if they were, say, iambic, with he stress falling on second, rather than first. al/MOST hea/VEN, west/VIR gin/YA, blue/RIDGE moun/TAIN, shen/AN/do/AH ri/VER. You see that the stresses just can't fall that way and sound sensible in English. Now there is my effort to analyze what to me is just so natural as to defy definition. I just want to hear the music and let it roll!
If so, she sang backup harmony with John on the recording.
Another enjoyable article! I do want to support a local DC musician, though: I think that “Take Me Home, Country Roads” was written almost entirely by Bill and Taffy Danoff (“Fat City”, and 1/2 of “The Starland Vocal Band”)with only a small amount of input from John Denver. Bill Danoff says the song was nearly completed when he played it for John Denver with whom he was appearing at a Washington, DC club. He later worried that he had erroneously put the Blue Ridge Mountains in West VA (they are there, barely).
There's a case to be made that at the very least John Denver had a LOT of help with that song. I heard, also, that there were some scurrilous lyrics in the original that were removed? And yes, the Blue Ridge Mountains are more properly a feature of Virginia -- but the meter required a strong single syllable, so we can allow some "poetic license" there. As for the Starland Vocal Band, I did also recall that those two wrote a (to me) tiresome song called "Afternoon Delight." Maybe the song's problem was that the DJ's played it too often? Overkill. What I did learn that I didn't know before was how much the two producers had to do with John Denver's success -- and the success of a number of acts about a mile long. And it sure did explain the similarity in the arrangement of the song as done by Peter, Paul, and Mary and THEN John Denver. There was a lot of great talent in those years, and some folks who were star-makers, too.
I didn’t hear anything about scurrilous lyrics—perhaps true, given the lyrics to “Afternoon Delight”. Bill Danoff did say that he had briefly considered using Massachusetts (his home state) as his topic but decided to change it to West Virginia, another 4 syllable state. At that point in his life he had never been to WV but he did have friends from there. Neither he nor his (ex-)wife would remember me at all, but I did talk to them a few times. A school friend was a member of the Starland Vocal Band and several of us went to their concerts to support him in particular. Bill Danoff was invariably friendly and willing to chat with his bandmate’s teenaged friends.
Taffy Nivert
When I was a kid, most of the music I heard at home was either Jazz or Classical...but there were a handful of other albums which were family favorites, among them the live, 2 album set, An Evening With John Denver....Another was an album titled 'Bobbie Gentry and Glen Campbell'.
In general, I do not like live recordings at all, by anyone--this album set was a RARE exception...to the point where I actually prefer these live recording of Denver's music over the studio albums. I've actually seen commentators state that this album is one of the best, if not THE best live recording...IN ANY GENRE!
And in this recording, he covered the McCartney/Lennon song 'Mother Nature's Son'.............The set closes with the song, 'This Old Guitar', about which I've often wondered if it took any inspiration from George Harrisons's fantastic 'While My Guitar Gently Weeps' (in a VERY general sense.)
I still listen to John Denver a lot, including all of his Christmas recordings, including the Muppets.
Haha! I never saw John Denver live, but I agree with you, I don't generally like live albums. But with him, I heard that he was really great with audiences and a complete natural on stage. I'll have to give a listen to that album. I also liked that he wasn't above doing other artists' work. I can say from personal experience that a guitarist comes to LOVE his guitar, I think in a way that isn't quite the same for, say, a pianist. Guitars have their own unique sounds, and they mellow as they age. Right now my beloved Guild D25 is in sick bay, with a loose bridge -- unplayable. I can't find a luthier hereabouts (we had one, but he is long retired) .. so I bought a Zager to fill in. I love the Zager, but I miss my Guild. I can say that hearing this song just immediately lifted my spirits -- and so his music did lift spirits, at least until he turned to politics. I'm not fond of musicians who go all political. I just want the music pure!
My family were first settlers in the Shenandoah Valley of VA and also in what is now WV. My grandfather took me to the old homesites, forts on the outskirts of 18th century civilization. I’ve drunk from the springs that sustained those early settlers as we visited their graves. I belong to the societies for the preservation of their memory. I am proud of my heritage.
My attachment to these mountains is strong and when we lived away I constantly felt the tug of them in my heart. As you know we have retired back home to The Valley, back for me anyway, my husband is originally from Texas, and I am rejoicing to be home.
BTW for those who don’t know, the Shenandoah River is actually in Virginia.
After he retired and interested in the 200 birthday of the USA, my grandfather decided to research the family. He would load my grandmother and me into the car and off we’d go. Courthouses in those days were not digitized and the records were originals in large heavy books stored in musty old basements. Gloves were not required when touching them. Historians of today would gasp in alarm. The clerk would take you to the storage room which, if you were lucky, had a table and a couple of chairs and turn you loose to explore. I was my grandfather’s research assistant. I learnt so much from him including the ability to decipher 18th century manuscripts quickly and accurately. :)
My grandmother didn’t involve herself in that aspect of the trips. She would bring a sandwich, a thermos of coffee, a magazine or two, and some peanuts, find herself a bench on the courthouse square, read the magazines as she watched the people go by and treat herself to a leisurely lunch, offering peanuts to any squirrels who approached.
Those were glorious days and such dear memories! I miss my grandparents terribly.
Thank you Debra for the stroll down memory lane on the country roads of my past. <3
Karen, those are glorious memories. I miss my grandparents, too. I came along when they were too old to travel much, but my granny took care of me often while my mother worked. My grandfather had a work shed where I got to go and watch him, and I also "helped" with planting seeds for his flower bed along the front walk. And my granny showed me how to pluck chickens! (As a kid this didn't bother me, haha.)
You know that I consider the Blue Ridge "almost heaven," right? God's country!
As you always say when I post pictures. :)
I say it because I mean it. And I've seen some beautiful places!
I.know it! John "Denver" wasn't from Colorado, either, but at least he lived there eventually. I guess that "poetic license" applies here. He needed an extra syllable to fill out the meter, and it had to be a strong one. I doubt he had ever been east when he collaborated on that lyric!
I think your WVA license plates used to say, “Almost Heaven..” didn’t they?
Yes and the state welcome signs as well.
Some also said “Welcome to Wild and Wonderful West Virginia!”
A friend and I drove across the US to Utah. We were both excited to see our own dear mountains upon our return east. The Rockies are impressive, but ours are prettier in comparison. Ours are lush, dense and green. Homey! Welcoming! Much preferable to my friend and I. :) Kudzu and all. ;)
Speaking of kudzu, in the 1980s an elderly woman was featured in the Atlanta Constitution Journal for single handedly clearing her old family homestead of kudzu. Just one elderly woman with her hoe, it took five years to clear every bit from her five acres. We used to see her out with her hoe as we drove by to get on 400, but didn’t know anything about her before the article in the AJC. Her family had lived on that property for generations. She’s gone now and her house replaced with condos. :( I hope she is not forgotten.
Home, your memories and those of the people who came before are important!
Oh, that lady and the war against the kudzu! Good old stubbornness takes you a long way -- in a worthy cause! Condos! They have been built up the side of the Hackettstown Mountain, in the valley of which my hometown was nestled. I love the East coast mountains (my parents retired to the Poconos, and the Appalachian Trail was a roadside attraction where they lifed), and I am very happy here in New Hampshire at the foot of Mt. Kearsarge, with the White Mountains to the north of us. Landscape matters!! And oh! how I hate the encroachment on the rural countryside by high-density housing.
Oh, dear. I forgot about that!
Having grown up and spent most of my life in Denver i've heard a whole lot of him - any live sporting event will include at least one and often more of his songs. he was a favorite in the 70s, after which my tastes went more to the edgy. such an innocence to his voice! he did influence my screen name: like him my surname is a cumbersome one, so i just placed my hometown before my Christian name. i've been using that appellation for nigh on 30 years now.
Well, I did wonder about the name, and now I know! Sounds like you made a good choice of a stage name, too -- and deserved it more than John Deutschendorf did -- though as an adoptive Coloradan, it sounds like he earned it, too. As a musician, you will enjoy hearing that in my crazy youth I followed a drummer friend of mine to his hometown, Nashville. While I was there I had some singing (and other) adventures. My friend was working in Skeeter Davis's backup band in those days, so I got many chances to be backstage at the Grand Ole Opry, and at one point Skeeter asked me to be her backup singer. (I am an alto and a natural harmonist -- that's why I love folk music so much, and songs by people like John Denver and James Taylor and adopted their style of finger picking.) I turned Skeeter down, mainly because I had detoured from college long enough and decided to get back to that! Good thing I did, or else I wouldn't be here now, since I met Tony in grad school at UNC Chapel Hill. I could've been a washed up band singer instead! As another John Denver "aside," my very talented guitarist singing partner in Nashville and I did audition for Opryland while I was there, and we sang "Annie's Song." We were good! But "the powers" chose a Donny and Marie cloned pair instead -- and they sang "That's Why I'm Leavin' it Up to You-ooo-ooo!" They were hired. I think the Lord wanted me to meet Tony! My singing buddy, Monty, went on to make a great little career for himself -- in a local vein -- as an extra fine Bluegrass mandolin player.
Ok, Debra, the jig is up.. When do we get a selection from you, playing, singing?
Monica, I have super-lousy recording devices these days. I might see if I can dig up an old tape -- IF I can -- from the glory days (such modest glory as there was, anyhow).
That would be great!👍
i'd be happy to sing harmony. Bass for sure or tenor if it doesn't go above E and i have a good chance to warm up first.
Gregg, you know my joke? Heaven is the place where the altos get to sing the melody. I honed my harmony skills out of necessity. Nowadays I am singing from the choir loft (with no "choir," only me and my daughter trying to lead a small congregation against my son's very loud pipe organ -- and I have to pretend to be a soprano! Ouch.
Proud to say that I saw him in concert at The Greek Theatre in LA (beautiful open air amphitheater) and he performed with a small orchestra on stage. He was so personable and friendly- never distant like some performers are. What a lovely night that was! Great choice among so many road songs!
I've heard that he was an amazing performer on stage. Good for him, and good for the many who saw him live. And yes, so many great songs!!!
Of course many of us are proud that we share an "Air Force brat" heritage with Mr. Denver. Military kids (we have two!) are often multi-talented, well-rounded, and have learned to be alone with themselves...and happy! But more to the point, as one of our favorite singers of our generation, and having been Christ followers since early teenagers, my wife and I often talk about how song writers and singers of his genre seem to walk right up to the edge of sacred-ness. Just imagine how powerful his music would have been if his words about beauty, nature, mountains, seas, love, friendship, and even "this old guitar" would have been if surrendered to the Holy, Triune God of creation! He was just so close at times!!
Scott, I'm taking in that message, and adding a hearty "amen" to it. Music is an extraordinary gift from the Lord to his created beings. They "music of the spheres" is an apt term for what that gift will be in the world to come. It's certainly true that (real) music elevates the soul and persists in the memory in a really transcendent way. We can hope to find out that John Denver may have reached out to his Maker when his plane was going down. Lord, have mercy. And we can be grateful for having had music such as his to elevate our own spirits.
Another worthy contender, by the Chairman:
https://youtu.be/Iixx6PnUy_I?si=6yjkweBQ-Qu1s2kS
Monica, you did nail it here. I considered the song, but didn't recall Frank's version, and it is grand! I think I could write an entire Substack just from that Chairman of the Board!
This album (A Swingin' Affair) is the ONLY Sinatra album I actually listen to, aside from one of his Christmas recordings...............never been a fan of that kind of music for the most part.
AW, Mark!!! You don't love Old Blue Eyes??? The best singer of the 20th century -- as recognized by THE best singer of the age, Luciano Pavarotti??? I have to sit down!!
Just teasing! And Francis Albert could swing, for sure.
Just saw this, for some reason...
Not so much don't like HIM, as I don't like that style of music/singing....Christmas music excepted.
However, there is also "High Society"---with Sinatra as a pathetic replacement for Jimmy Stewart, Crosby for Cary Grant and Grace Kelly for Kathrine Hepburn........I mean, come on............sort of like (and forgive the cheek) comparing the Catholic Mass with a Protestant "service".
We were waiting with baited breath. Great choice!
I count on that, Monica. I had a heck of a time writing this one, for some reason. Glad you enjoyed it.
Just to be clear---I NEVER sit around with worms in my mouth........
Hahaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!
Oops, caught me! (Pardon the pun)
You two need to take this show on the road!
It's nice that the Ray Charles clip showed the back-up singers. Such talented vocalists greatly enhanced a number of popular songs in the 1960s, often anonymously. Sometimes they would receive merely session fees for their essential contributions to the hit records.
Steve, yes. I really did want to feature them, because that song just HAD TO HAVE THEM. And wasn't Ray sublime?
The interplay between Ray Charles and his back-up singers is stellar! I can see how much fun they were having. Along with so many other things, singing can be FUN!🥰
The fun had to be there. And with these great recordings, we get to enjoy it again and again.
Excellent. Lots of memories. Apparently Take Me Home has enjoyed a renaissance among the younger set. Before I retired and moved back to Central NY, I was teaching at a charter school in California that was about 90% Latino. One morning, as I was prepping for first period, I heard voices raised in song coming from common area where the kids hung out before school. Six 11th graders were singing Take Me Home, Country Roads. Hard to imagine a more unlikely anthem for these lads, but they loved it and sang it periodically through the rest of the school year.it
Wow! An unlikely anthem, indeed. But it makes me happy for great music to find new audiences. The young folks need to be absolutely immersed in music all the time. As parents, we have the power to do this for our kids AT HOME .. but the chain was broken somewhere along the line .. and now there's not the natural passage of great music from one generation to the next. THAT's sad.
You're right. When I taught 8th graders (2012-14), I had a girl named Natalie who insisted that there had been no good music since 1979. Her Walkman was filled with the Beatles, the Supremes, the Shirelles, etc. Then there was this video, which "went viral" about a year ago of a middle school teacher getting a request to play Take Me Home. Her reaction is priceless as the kids join in: https://www.facebook.com/bill.warford.9/videos/313127327889516
Wow, I am floored. What I saw and heard was kind of bittersweet, however. That teacher didn't know the music. How the kids did is beyond me, but what I also heard was the modern ailment of (literal) tone-deafness. A friend of ours pointed this out to us in a restaurant about 30 years ago, when the practice of having wait staff sing "happy birthday" to patrons was catching on. Our friend said that the young folks -- back then -- could recognize only two notes: up and down. And that they were otherwise unable to "sing." He was right. Shortly after that my 6-year-old daughter joined the Girl Scouts, and at summer camp, I'd pick her up at the end of the day, and the girls met to retire the flag and to sing. But they didn't sing. They shouted the words, and it was utterly . . well .. tuneless. Somewhere between my school days and that time, real music fell out of the curriculum. We homeschooled our kids, and I ran a folk song sing-along class for awhile. What I found is that most of the homeschooled kids could sing, but that neither they nor the parents knew ANY folk songs -- that a generation earlier everyone knew. I had to literally introduce kids AND parents to "Polly Wolly Doodle" and "Jimmy Crack Corn," and "When Johnny Comes Marching Home." Alas! We need to take back the music and pass it along again!
Another superb post, thank you!
I think it's an American standard, with some vivid evocation:
"...The radio reminds me of my home far away
Drivin' down the road, I get a feelin'
That I should've been home yesterday..."
It's a very "real" song, and as you say evocative. Who hasn't had this sort of experience? The song speaks to the soul. The desire to "go home" is as natural to human beings as breathing is. Glad you enjoyed this one!
Fantastic musical selections! Songs I grew up with. I fondly remember our station-wagon of recently graduated seniors, driven by Fr. Ed Heile, singing this song, somewhere in Kansas, as we headed home to Kentucky, after being on the Colorado River for ten days, in July, '71. Thanks, Debra.
That's a great memory, John! A few years after that I was on a 5-week tour of Continental Europe with my high school guidance counselor (from Holland) and a two bus-loads of us kids, taking the grand tour for five weeks. That's where I firmed up my guitar skills, because a few of us had brought along guitars! We literally sang our way across Europe, folk songs all the way. "Take My Home, Country Roads" was a favorite, of course. Thanks for inspiring a good memory of my own!
One of the many blessings of music (and of the films, poems, and books, which you and Dr. Tony have featured here) is the unlocking of cherished memories and associated emotions, through a familiar lyric or melody Thanks for sharing that wonderful part of your life, when you and your fellow-traveling troubadours roamed the Old World. I imagine you all touched the lives of people there, who also remember. This song of a home-place, which you chose, has inspired the memories of many member of Word and Song.
John, I'm so glad to be able to inspire some great memories! The music itself actually is an aid to the memory. In discussing the old songs I also (and my family) bet a boost memory of things we haven't thought of in a long time. So many of the tunes I share remind me of my mother, who instilled in me a love of the American Standards -- songs that are just tremendous works of art. My only regret with doing Word & Song is that my own guitar sits in the case more often than not, just because I'm so busy. BUT listening to these great old tunes and sharing them is a labor of love for me. And I think of Sometimes a Song as a tribute to my mother.