John Denver, musician

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He’s not Catholic, and not conservative by any means, but he is an incredibly spiritual performer.

My parents adored him as I grew up. I always listened to his big hits. “Colorado Rocky Mountain High” and “Some Days are Diamonds, Some Days are Stones” were huge for us.

Last year I rediscovered his artistic genius, and I’ve been listening chiefly to “Higher Ground” and “One World”. I love his paeans to Australia and Alaska. His duets are fantastic, Alexander Gradsky with “Let Us Begin” is the most moving anti-war song I’ve heard in a while.

He led an admirable lifestyle, perhaps a bit of womanizing and pot-smoking, but he had a pilot’s license and loved to fly (it shows in his lyrics). Although that was his ultimate undoing, he died doing what he loved, and he lived life to its fullest.
 
The unofficial state song of Colorado is his Colorado Rocky Mountain High. It’s almost mandatory when camping in RMNF to sing around your campfire! 😂😂😂

Also loved Annie’s song and Country Roads. Our lab played his songs all day on the day he died.

And I loved him in the movie Oh, God. :hugs:
 
Annie’s song was my mom’s favorite.

And I cannot listen to it anymore, without sobbing like a baby.
 
Interesting that the subject of John Denver came up on the board this week, as I was just thinking about what a great person he was in real life, and all the good he did.

There was an interview on the radio here recently with the co-authors of Country Roads and they mentioned that he chose to devote his life to a number of causes he believed in.
 
John Denver was my very first ever serious crush when I was a tween. I fell in love with him (Along with half the other tween and teen girls in the USA) after seeing him guest star on “McCloud” where he appeared as a guitar-playing deputy who sang “I Guess He’d Rather Be in Colorado” and dated a then-unknown Farrah Fawcett just before getting beat up by the bad guys.

For the next several years I watched every TV special with him in it (many), listened rapturously to about half of his albums (because that was all I could either cadge out of my parents for gifts, or buy with Green Stamps from the May Company because I had no money then), and cut every article I could find about him out of the newspapers and magazines and kept them in a scrapbook.

Within a couple years I moved on to crush on other musicians, and kind of fell off the bandwagon. I was a bit bummed when I heard he broke up with the Annie of Annie’s Song fame and married Susan Anton from the Muriel cigar ads. I guess he had a bit of a dark side to him. And I was a bit weirded out when he appeared in a video pitch for United Way that was shown at my then-employer, which pretty much pushed us all to give to United Way or else.

But I was still really sad when he died. One of these days I am planning to invest in a box set of his records and listen to all the ones I could not afford to buy with my Green Stamps.
 
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He flew in some sort of ultra-modern plane or something? Correct? That’s very sad, he never should have been doing that.

“Breezes in Old Shanghai” is another one I really a lot. Very talented.
 
He just had the most smooth mellow voice and was best at love songs, whether to women or landscapes! 😂. With that mop of blonde hair and goofy huge grin, he was so cute…not necessarily handsome, cute!

@Tis_Bearself, I’m a little older than you but had a wee crush myself!
 
My favorite song is Take Me Home, Country Roads.

We have a local musician who does an amazing tribute show to John Denver–we’ve seen it twice and would go see it again. He has several versions of it, emphasizing different aspects of Denver’s artistry.
 
I used to be a huge fan of his music. It was a big part of my life during high school and college, and therefore I have a lot of memories connected to his music. I hadn’t listened to his music for a while after he died, and when I did, I was surprised by how sad it made me feel to hear them. I think I feel connected to him by some sad times in my life. His music comforted me at the time, but to hear them now makes me relive the sad days.

I do think he was a tremendous talent, and there will never be another like him.
 
I had a boss who refused to believe that there was a line that in that song went ‘Mountain mama … take me home’. He had a problem with ‘Mountain mama’ even though he was from Cincinnati and spoke ‘Mountain South’ American English.
 
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One of my favorites is “The Cowboy and the Lady” – it’s pretty humorous and self-deprecating, but also the music is rather majestic and exciting. It’s interesting how a singer-songwriter can take a perfectly ordinary, brief encounter in an airport and weave it into a wonderful anthemic tune.
 
I think as a result of this thread I’m going to take a long look at John Denver’s music. Both the elan of it and the musical structure of it. One last boon from CAF, before it closes.

John Denver was incredibly popular in the 70’s, despite being nothing like, say, Bob Dylan. I’m old enough to remember that. It’s a pretty impressive accomplishment. It’s kind of ‘cool’ to like the Carpenters, but John Denver is a whole ‘other frontier.
 
Thanks, I did not know a lot of this:
Denver was not legally permitted to fly at the time of the crash. In previous years, he had several arrests for drunk driving.[61] In 1996, nearly a year before the accident, the Federal Aviation Administration learned that Denver had failed to maintain sobriety by not refraining entirely from alcohol, so they revoked his medical certification.[54][55] The accident was not influenced by alcohol use, however, since an autopsy found no sign of alcohol or other drugs in Denver’s body.[54]
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Okay, no drugs or alcohol found in his system but certainly not good to read this. Right, he should not have been in it to begin with. Really sad.
 
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There are some other 70’s singers I like, like Canadians Ann Murray and Stan Rogers (and probably many others).
 
tomarin said:
I had a boss who refused to believe that there was a line that in that song went ‘Mountain mama … take me home’. He had a problem with ‘Mountain mama’ even though he was from Cincinnati and spoke ‘Mountain South’ American English.
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Considering that the song was written by a guy from Massachusetts and a woman from Washington DC who got together in Georgetown, it wasn’t exactly any kind of authentic “mountain music”.
It was a good song anyway.
 
Do not read this post without tissue.

I saw him once, in person, at a benefit for the families of the crew of the Challenger. It was a hallmark moment in my life. That is where he sung the song, “They Were Flying for Me.” It was quite the emotional experience. I found the video from that concert with the Houston Philharmonic.


I think the release from this had a cut from Reagan’s speech, one of his best.

The crew of the space shuttle Challenger honored us by the manner in which they lived their lives. We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them, this morning, as they prepared for their journey and waved goodbye and “slipped the surly bonds of earth” to “touch the face of God.”

https://www.nasa.gov/audience/formedia/speeches/reagan_challenger.html#:~:text=The%20crew%20of%20the%20space,touch%20the%20face%20of%20God."
 
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