John Denver – “Take Me Home, Country Roads”, “Sunshine On My Shoulders”, “Grandma’s Feather Bed” and “Rocky Mountain High”

by Paul

Driving down country roads in New Zealand in my late teens, often the melody of the John Denver song, “Take Me Home, Country Roads” would come to mind, and I’d find myself singing it as I drove along.

I say late teens because I sold my car to go on my first trip to Europe just before I turned twenty. In fact, I had my 20th birthday on the plane back home a couple of months later.

Because of the time differences and the international dateline, I actually only had about an hour of birthday, at Honolulu International Airport in Hawaii.

Anyway… I used to find the song particularly appropriate when I was driving home from university along State Highway 50, actually a series of practically empty back roads that run the length of Central Hawkes Bay parallel to the main road, State Highway 2.

It follows a range of mountains and crosses numerous rivers…

As you are perhaps aware, John Denver lost his life in a plane crash, flying solo, in 1997. Long before then, this had become one of his signature songs.

Here is a live version of “Take Me Home, Country Roads”:

And this is one of the many videos of “Take Me Home, Country Roads” with scenery from West Virginia (at least I think it is, that’s what the sign at the beginning says – another one turned out to be pictures of Canada!)

Now you may or may not be familiar with another version of the song. It has “West Jamaica” instead of “West Virginia”, and a few other localisations from the Carribbean island:

Toots And The Maytals sing their own West Jamaican “Take me Home, Country Roads” in this video:

Back to John Denver, I found this video of his Number One hit “Sunshine On My Shoulders”, with a selection of shots from various specials – I just love the Muppets scenes, especially with Miss Piggy:

Speaking of the Muppets, take a look at this Muppet version of “Grandma’s Feather Bed:

There are a number of other songs linked with the name of John Denver, such as the hit he wrote for Peter, Paul and Mary, “Leaving On A Jet Plane” (I hadn’t realised he wrote it), “Annie’s Song” (penned in ten minutes on a skilift for his first wife), “Calypso” (about the research ship of marine scientist Jacques Cousteau) and “Thank God I’m A Country Boy.

But it is probably safe to say that if John Denver has another signature song, it is “Rocky Mountain High”:

“Rocky Mountain High” is meanwhile one of the two official state songs of Colorado. If being in or seeing awesome high mountains gets you high, you’ll probably enjoy this song too.

See you in Colorado…

Paul