Origins: Country Roads (John Denver) alt. versions

Subject: Lyr Req: Other Lyrics to Country Roads
From: GUEST,lsigis
Date: 23 Aug 06 - 10:29 AM

I've recently learned that there are perhaps 2-3 original verses to Take Me Home Country Roads that were not recorded by John Denver. One of these mentions a plastic Jesus (I am aware there is an entire song called Plastic Jesus but this is not the same). Does anyone know the lyrics or know of a recording that contains additional verses by Bill Danoff?

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Other Lyrics to Country Roads
From: greg stephens
Date: 23 Aug 06 - 12:13 PM

There is a reggae version(with lyrics changed to make it appropriate to America): I think it might have been by Toots and the Maytals, but I could be wildly wrong on that.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Other Lyrics to Country Roads
From: Peace
Date: 23 Aug 06 - 01:17 PM

Interesting site here that has gangs of stuff about the song.

. . . but not the lyrics you seek.

Subject: RE: Req: Other Lyrics to John Denver's Country Roads
From: GUEST,Pete Peterson
Date: 23 Aug 06 - 01:41 PM

Dorothy Horstman's "Sing Your Heart Out, Country Boy" (copyright 1975) got the idea of asking the composers or artists of country songs for the backstory. Bill and Taffy Danoff say there that the original second verse was:

In the foothills, hiding from the clouds
Pink and purple West Virginia farmhouse
Naked ladies, men who looked like Christ
And a dog named Pancho nibbling on the rice.

    "We knew before it was finished that it would never get on the air, but we wrote the chorus anyway. During the last week of December 1970, John Denver came over to the apartment. . . heard the song, got excited and dropped the second verse and finished writing it at six o-clock in the morning."

When asked for the song, I ask people if they are ready for the original lyrics and sing those. . . just as I add the suppressed verses from "This Land is Your Land" and the politically VERY incorrect verses of Oh Susanna

Subject: RE: Req: Other Lyrics to John Denver's Country Roads
From: Janie
Date: 23 Aug 06 - 01:50 PM

I wish someone WOULD rewrite the lyrics of the chorus. I especially wish that had been done before the song was recorded and made so popular.

This native West Virginian has always been extremely peeved that he/they took the name and slogan of West Virginia and then paired it with western Virginia landmarks. Granted, the Blue Ridge and the Shenandoah are lovely, but no lovelier than ridges and streams actually located in WV, that would have scanned just as well. For example

...Allegheny Mountains
Cherry and New Rivers...

Not all hillbillies feel the same way I do about it. I guess it comes from growing up in a time when many, many people thought West Virginia referred to western Virginia. I have actually had people say, on learning I am from West Virginia, "Oh really? I have an aunt who lives in Richmond."

Rant over. Hope you find the lyrics you are looking for.

Janie

Subject: RE: Req: Other Lyrics to John Denver's Country Roa
From: Sorcha
Date: 23 Aug 06 - 01:55 PM

seamus has one....let me look

Subject: RE: Req: Other Lyrics to John Denver's Country Roa
From: artbrooks
Date: 23 Aug 06 - 02:03 PM

That's Concrete Roads, Sorcha...but a parody rather than alternative original verses.

Subject: RE: Req: Other Lyrics to John Denver's Country Roads
From: Mr Red
Date: 23 Aug 06 - 02:06 PM

Country Roads - is that in the key of A1 or is it B minor?

I'll get me coat

Subject: RE: Req: Other Lyrics to John Denver's Country Roads
From: GUEST,Russ
Date: 23 Aug 06 - 02:39 PM

Janie,

me too.

My favorite WV song is Hazel Dickens' "West Virginia My Home."

Subject: RE: Req: Other Lyrics to John Denver's Country Roads
From: GUEST,Pete Peterson
Date: 23 Aug 06 - 02:49 PM

Yeah. You can win trivia bets on this one. "Which extends further west, VA or WV?"

Cheer up, they could have had the Shenandoah River a tributary of the Missouri, as happens in another song I know.

Subject: RE: Req: Other Lyrics to John Denver's Country Roads
From: Janie
Date: 23 Aug 06 - 02:49 PM

And Russ, coinsidentally- I just took a peek at the John Henry thread. Throughout that thread they refer to Virginia instead of West Virginia.

Janie

Subject: RE: Req: Other Lyrics to John Denver's Country Roads
From: Peace
Date: 23 Aug 06 - 02:50 PM

A roadmap book (well known and usually very good) once omitted New Mexico in its entirety.

Subject: RE: Req: Other Lyrics to John Denver's Country Roads
From: GUEST,Pete Peterson
Date: 23 Aug 06 - 02:50 PM

Isn't WV the state with FIVE state songs? (Check out a back issue of Goldenseal Magazine ((HIGHLY recommended)) for that story. . .)

Pete

still basking in the memories of Clifftop 2006

Subject: RE: Req: Other Lyrics to John Denver's Country Roa
From: Janie
Date: 23 Aug 06 - 03:07 PM

The official State song is West Virginia Hills.

But I don't know if there is any other state that has inspired so many songs of longing to return as has West Virginia.

Like Russ, my favorite is West Virginia, You Are My home,
but one I learned from "Soup Kitchen", written by Coleen Anderson is a close second. It's called West Virginia Chose Me, which begins, "Someone's Always Leaving Here..."

Pete, my fiddlin' sister, Annie, never misses Clifftop and keeps trying to get me there. She really loves it. However, I'm a singer, mostly a cappella, not a instrumentalist, and I start to fret (no pun intended) at feeling left out in the parking lot and campground sessions. (I likes to listen-but I likes to participate too!)

Janie

Subject: RE: Req: Other Lyrics to John Denver's Country Roads
From: Janie
Date: 23 Aug 06 - 03:09 PM

The extreme southwestern part of Virginia extends somewhat further west than West Virginia. They really shoulda a come with us. They mostly get treated like stepchildren by the rest of Virginia anyway.

Janie

Subject: RE: Req: Other Lyrics to John Denver's Country Roads
From: GUEST
Date: 23 Aug 06 - 03:37 PM

YThere is an Australian version.

Subject: RE: Req: Other Lyrics to John Denver's Country Roads
From: GUEST,Pete Peterson
Date: 23 Aug 06 - 11:13 PM

It's the summer 2004 issue of Goldenseal, and I was wrong; WV has THREE official state songs; West Virginia, My Home Sweet Home (written 1947, declared "official state song" in 1947), "The West Virginia Hills" (written 1885, declared an "official state song" in 1962, and "This Is My West Virginia (written and declared official in 1962). "To resolve the matter, all three songs were declared official and equal by House Concurrent Resolution #19, adopted by the Legislature on 2/28/63. (article by Richard Ramella, who discusses a number of other songs, going on to mention "Country Roads" and Hazel Dickens' "West Virginia My Home" which is how I got confused and thought the number to be five.

Subject: RE: Req: Other Lyrics to John Denver's Country Roa
From: Janie
Date: 23 Aug 06 - 11:45 PM

I think you would be pretty hard pressed to find anyone who knows or has even heard "This is My West Virginia" or "West Virginia, My Home Sweet Home." I've been poking around on the Web this evening looking for lyrics for songs about WV. I was surprised to see the these two listed as official state songs and could not find the lyrics anywhere.

    I was in public school in Kanawha Co. from 1957 until 1969, and the only official state song we were ever taught or told about was "The West Virginia Hills." Did Goldenseal publish the lyrics of the other two? I'd like to see them and maybe find a midi.

    In my searching this evening, I ran across some other songs--most pretty bad but a couple were very nice. If nothing else, this thread has led me to them.

Janie

Subject: RE: Req: Other Lyrics to John Denver's Country Roads
From: GUEST,Russ
Date: 24 Aug 06 - 01:17 PM

Janie,

I'm an expat. Mingo County.

I don't have the "Stirring It Up" Soup Kitchen CD with "West Virginia Chose Me." I'm going to remedy that.

I learned "WV Hills" in grade school and "WV My Home" from Hazel's CD, but I have never heard either of the other two "official" songs.

I didn't know about them until I read about them in Goldenseal.

Russ (Permanent GUEST)

Subject: RE: Req: Other Lyrics to John Denver's Country Roads
From: GUEST,Russ
Date: 24 Aug 06 - 01:38 PM

I usually tell people that a person should go to Clifftop once, just to have the experience and say that they did.

Then it's up to the person to take it or leave it.

My cousin in Huntington who is not a musician and at one point knew absolutely nothing about WV traditional music, came to Clifftop one year out of curiosity because he knew that I attended regularly. He's been back every year since. He makes it a day trip.

Admittedly, Clifftop is all fiddling all the time, but the environment is not entirely inimical to singing.

I am a banjo player but I know who likes to sing and seek them out. The singing is happening but you have to know where to look for it.

Russ (Permanent GUEST)

Subject: RE: Req: Other Lyrics to John Denver's Country Roa
From: Janie
Date: 24 Aug 06 - 05:47 PM

Russ,

Click West Virginia Chose Me, which begins, "Someone's Always Leaving Here..." for a sample of the same, performed by Coleen herself. There are also samples of some other WV songs, of varying merit regarding both the songs and the performances. A couple of them are pretty nice.

Coleen Anderson does the song in a Pop-Country style that is not my preferred style of music. It's good--just not my style. The Soup Kitchen is, as always, a cappella, with Becky singing the lead and Will joining in on harmony on the chorus-gives it a very different feel.

We lived in Williamson for a little while when I was very small, and Mom was born and raised just over the border in McDowell County. Dad was born in Eastern Kentucky and raised in Huntington. I've been in North Carolina for 20 years now, but Mom & Dad, Fa-in-law & nephews are still there outside of Charleston and I go home as much as I can. Toot my horn and hoot my voice every time I emerge from the north end of East River Mountain Tunnel. Cry every time I leave--in spite of really loving my adopted hometown of Hillsborough, NC.

If I could pm this to you I would rather than bore all of Mudcat with my personal history--but there ya are--can't let an opportunity to share with another Hillbilly pass me by.

Maybe I will give Clifftop a try next year.

Janie

Subject: RE: Req: Other Lyrics to John Denver's Country Roads
From: Janie
Date: 24 Aug 06 - 05:51 PM

And after all this, I have the name of the song wrong. It is called West Virginia Chose Me. Sheesh.

Dare I ask the clones to fix another glaring error?

Janie

Subject: RE: Req: Other Lyrics to John Denver's Country Roads
From: Janie
Date: 24 Aug 06 - 06:00 PM

Freud lives!

Subject: RE: Req: Other Lyrics to John Denver's Country Roads
From: clueless don
Date: 25 Aug 06 - 08:59 AM

Just for the record, the Shenandoah River is located, at least partly, in West Virginia. Up near Harpers Ferry.

Don

Subject: RE: Req: Other Lyrics to John Denver's Country Roads
From: GUEST,Russ
Date: 25 Aug 06 - 09:38 AM

Janie,

I mentioned the Soup Kitchen CD because it seems to be the only recording that has the song that is currently available.

To be honest, I might already have it. I remember Bill selling me a CD at Stonewall Jackson maybe last year. I'll have to look. My CDs are not as well organized as they should be. Nor is my memory.

Grew up in Williamson. My father grew up in Huntington. My wife's family is from Eastern Kentucky, Letcher County.

Since I am a GUEST, and I insist on remaining a GUEST on principal, pm-ing me is not an option.

If you visit WV regularly, you could perhaps plan a visit during the last week in July and spend a day at Clifftop. That way you can avoid the logistical hassles of camping.

I really don't want to be pushy or obsessive about Clifftop. It is not for everybody. But it is a unique experience that might be worth sampling. Now that I think of it, Helena Triplett used to enter the non-trad band contest and sing a ballad. Occasionally there have been ballad workshops where some of the participants actually knew what a ballad is.

As much as I like Clifftop, my personal favorite is the Stonewall Jackson Jubilee (labor day). Sort of Clifftop for West Virginians.

I think that a few members of the cat are West Virginians. One, who shall remain nameless, seems to be some sort of "professional" hillbilly. I'm surprised they haven't chimed in.

Subject: RE: Req: Other Lyrics to John Denver's Country Roads
From: GUEST,Janie
Date: 25 Aug 06 - 04:54 PM

Russ,

Another one that Annie always heads home to WV for is the Gardner Winter Festival in Morgantown. More info at http://www.gwmf.org/.

Janie

Subject: RE: Req: Other Lyrics to John Denver's Country Roads
From: GUEST,Janie
Date: 25 Aug 06 - 05:09 PM

Clueless Don,

And the Blue Ridge also touches that tiny tip of that far eastern part of the Panhandle and of the State. But no one (except perhaps some one living in Jefferson Co.) associates either the Blue Ridge or the Shenandoah with West Virginia. They are symbols of Virginia.

Janie

Subject: RE: Req: Other Lyrics to John Denver's Country Roads
From: GUEST,Russ
Date: 25 Aug 06 - 05:29 PM

clueless don,

We're not going to cut a flatlander any slack:)

Russ (Permanent GUEST, part time hillbilly)

Subject: RE: Req: Other Lyrics to John Denver's Country Roads
From: fretless
Date: 25 Aug 06 - 05:50 PM

I joined this thread a few days late, but loved your verse Pete. Can't wait to sing it at the close of WVU's football games this fall (for those not in the know, the university band plays Country Roads at the end of every game. Supposedly, it helps calm the crowd, which otherwise is disposed to tearing down the goalposts, etc.).

Subject: RE: Req: Other Lyrics to John Denver's Country Roads
From: GUEST,Pete Peterson
Date: 25 Aug 06 - 06:55 PM

Hi Fretless,

Thanks, don't give ME credit for that verse; it was Taffy and Bill Danoff. . .

Janie,
   Try Clifftop for a day or two! Among the fiddlers and banjoplayers there are those of us who sing and we (kinda) know where the good singers camp and seek each other out. Trouble is, with 3500 people toward the end of the week, it's too big to see and make music with all the people you'd like to spend time with. Rochelle Morris is a vendor who comes year after year (lives in FL) and she will know where people are. Our band (the Orpheus Supertones) actually sang the Shelor Family's "Big Bend Gal" in the Traditional band finals this year. Which may be why we finished 5th in a field of five. But I digress.
That issue of Goldenseal DOES have words to all the songs and I think they'll sell you back issues.

Russ,
I notice you didn't mention the WV Folk Festival at Glenville, 3rd weekend of June each year. I wish we could get to ALL the ones you mention.

Subject: RE: Req: Other Lyrics to John Denver's Country Roads
From: Janie
Date: 25 Aug 06 - 07:36 PM

Lordy, Lordy! I had forgotten about the WV Folk Festival. (Which means I've been gone too long.) They used to let us camp on the hill at the roadside park just out of town. Bet that is a thing well into the past.

   Pete and Russ, I don't know how much overlap there is among us generationally, but if you were playing old-time or some bluegrass music from the early '70's forward, in and around West Virginia, check out the photo section of the Gardner Festival that I linked to above. I just did--what a stroll down memory lane! And many of those same musicians from the early years are still showing up. (35 years of photos of Annie scattered through them.) If you have been to the Getaway, the Garner Festival as that same reunion feel to it.

    Do either of you remember the Ivydale festivals that John and Dave put on, or my all-time, old-time favorite, the spring and fall Huntersville festivals that BJ Sharp put on just outside of Marlinton?

    Thanks Pete. Mom and Dad or Annie may have that issue. If not, I'll order it.

    1sigis, I hope you got the lyrics you were looking for by starting this thread. I didn't mean to hijack it.

Janie

Subject: RE: Req: Other Lyrics to John Denver's Country Roa
From: jaze
Date: 25 Aug 06 - 07:36 PM

I lived in W VA for three years in the 70's and would go back there tomorrow. Loved every minute of it and still miss it. Rippling Waters Bluegrass Festival in Romance,W VA was great. Janie, do you remember the Putnam County Pickers? They were pretty well known then. The friendliest, most down to earth people I ever met were in W VA. And much of the scenery is almost heaven.

Subject: RE: Req: Other Lyrics to John Denver's Country Roads
From: Janie
Date: 25 Aug 06 - 08:14 PM

jaze,

Indeed I do. I went to the Rippling Waters Festival at least twice (as I recall it didn't have a long run.) Old-time was more my interest than Bluegrass, however. And I also have always tended to prefer the really small festivals.

One of the 'Pickers', Larry Groce, is the driving force of Mountain Stage, which is produced by West Virginia Public Radio and broadcast by NPR.

Janie

Subject: RE: Req: Other Lyrics to John Denver's Country Roads
From: GUEST,lsigis
Date: 26 Aug 06 - 11:38 AM

Pete,

Thanks for the original 2nd verse. Dare I ask for the suppressed lyrics to This Land is Your Land or the politically incorrect Oh Susannah?

Interesting discussion of WV songs and music festivals, many of which I am aware of - but any other ideas on original lyrics?

Linda

Subject: RE: Req: Other Lyrics to John Denver's Country Roads
From: GUEST,Russ
Date: 26 Aug 06 - 01:43 PM

Janie,

Left WV in 74. A lot of good musical stuff started happening after I left.

Went to Ivydale and Cedar Lakes but never got to Glenville. I have remedied that lack in recent years.

Don't remember the Huntersville festival.

Do remember Don West's festial at Pipestem. Good music but one thing that sticks in my memory is being greeted at the gate by some flatlander playing hillbilly. I was way more polite than I should've been.

Never got to Gardner. In the late 60s and early 70s before the interstates and Corridor G it was an extremely long hike from SW WV to Morgantown. Actually it was an extremely long hike from almost anywhere in WV to almost anywhere in WV in those days.

Subject: RE: Req: Other Lyrics to John Denver's Country Roa
From: lamarca
Date: 26 Aug 06 - 08:15 PM

There is a reggae version(with lyrics changed to make it appropriate to America): I think it might have been by Toots and the Maytals, but I could be wildly wrong on that.

Yup, Greg, it was Toots and the Maytals - I love the Jamaican rewrite references -

"Almost heaven, West Jamaica,
High Blue Mountains, shining ocean round her..."

Subject: DT Correction: Take Me Home, Country Roads
From: Joe Offer
Date: 26 Aug 16 - 12:45 AM

The lyrics in the Digital Tradition are correct, but the songwriter name and title are incomplete:

TAKE ME HOME, COUNTRY ROADS
(Bill Danoff, T. Nivert Danoff, and John Denver)

Almost heaven, West Virginia
Blue Ridge Mountains, Shenandoah River
Life is old there, older than the trees
Younger than the mountains, growing like a breeze

CHORUS:
Country roads, take me home
To the place I belong
West Virginia, mountain mama
Take me home, country roads

All my memories gather 'round her,
Miner's lady, stranger to blue water
Dark and dusty, painted on the sky
Misty taste of moonshine, teardrop in my eye

BRIDGE:
I hear her voice, in the morning hours she calls me
Radio reminds me of my home far away
Driving down the road, I get a feelinG
That I should have been home yesterday, yesterday

Copyright 1971 by Cherry Lane Music Co.
@home @American
filename[ CNTRYRD
SS

---

Notes from Sing Your Heart Out, Country Boy, by Dorothy Horstman (Country Music Foundation Press, 1975), pp. 24-25.

"We had been receiving letters from an artist friend who lived in the mountains of West Virginia, reveling in the beauty of the countryside. Then, on the way to a family reunion of Taffy's relatives in Maryland, Bill started to write a song about the little, wind-y roads we were driving on to get there. The song hung around for awhile as the two words, "country roads." Later, Bill decided to write the song about our artist friend. The original second verse was:

In the foothills, hiding from the clouds,
Pink and purple West Virginia farmhouse;
Naked ladies, men who looked like Christ,
And a dog named Pancho nibbling on the rice.

We knew before it was finished it would never get on the air, but we wrote the chorus anyway. During the last week of December 1970, John Denver came over to our apartment after the last show at the Cellar Door in Washington DC, where we were both appearing. He heard the song, got excited, and we dropped the second verse and finished writing it at six o'clock in the morning. The rest is history. Someday we'll visit West Virginia." -Bill and Taffy Danoff-
Bill Danoff also wrote the 1976 hit, "Afternoon Delight," recorded by the Starland Vocal Band.

I wonder if the Danoffs ever got to West Virginia....

Subject: Country Roads
From: Donuel
Date: 06 Jan 21 - 04:51 PM

A local DC guy wrote this song for Johnney Cash but by fate it was introduced by John Denver
link

Subject: RE: Country Roads
From: cnd
Date: 06 Jan 21 - 09:30 PM

Huh, the more you know!

Subject: RE: Country Roads
From: gillymor
Date: 06 Jan 21 - 09:43 PM

Funny, over the holidays my eldest sister told me she was in the audience the night Denver and Bill and Taffy premiered this song at the Cellar Door in D.C.

Subject: RE: Origins: Country Roads (John Denver) alt. versions
From: Joe Offer
Date: 06 Jan 21 - 09:58 PM

Donuel tends to misinterpret things. Here's the text from the link he provided:

Forty-nine years ago today, on April 12, 1971, John Denver's "Take Me Home, Country Roads" was released as a single. The song is from his 1971 album Poems, Prayers & Promises.

Bill Danoff and Taffy Nivert originally started writing "Take Me Home, Country Roads" for Johnny Cash. But, when Denver learned of the track, he requested to help finish it and decided to include it on one of his records.

"I played him what I had of "Country Roads," and he said, 'Wow! That's great, that's a hit song! Did you record it?'" Danoff recalls to NPR. "I said, 'No, we don't have a record deal.'"

At the time, Danoff and Nivert were both struggling musicians who were trying to make a name for themselves together. While the two may have found success by releasing "Take Me Home, Country Roads" as their own tune, neither of the songwriters regrets letting Denver have what became the biggest hit of his career.

"It wasn't a country record," Danoff maintains. "We could've beat up Nashville and nobody would've recorded it. One thing I learned in this business is that things turn out other than you planned them to, no matter what it is. And you can't predict what's going to happen."

"Take Me Home, Country Roads" was a hit on the country charts, as well as on the all-genre Billboard Hot 100 and the Billboard Adult Contemporary charts. More than a dozen artists, including Ray Charles, Loretta Lynn, Eddy Arnold, Lynn Anderson and Daryle Singletary, have recorded cover versions of the tune; Carrie Underwood also performed the song during her 2010 Play On Tour. In 2014, the song became the official state anthem for West Virginia, and in 2016, the Country Music Association used the song as part of their all-star "Forever Country" mashup in celebration of the CMA Awards' 50th anniversary.

"Take Me Home, Country Roads" remained a staple of Denver's live shows throughout the remainder of his career. The artist died in 1997, when his airplane crashed in California.

Subject: RE: Origins: Country Roads (John Denver) alt. versions
From: gillymor
Date: 06 Jan 21 - 10:04 PM

Speaking of songs meant for Johnny Cash, Arlo once introduced City of New Orleans by telling how Steve Goodman played City of New Orleans for him in the back of a bar in Chicago and asked him to get it to J.C. Arlo, who had a big hit with the song, finished his intro with "I ain't seen Cash since."

Subject: RE: Origins: Country Roads (John Denver) alt. versions
From: GUEST,Ray
Date: 07 Jan 21 - 03:35 AM

Strange how many people sing the tune that Arlo recorded rather than the tune Steve Goodman wrote.

Subject: RE: Origins: Country Roads (John Denver) alt. versions
From: gillymor
Date: 07 Jan 21 - 03:39 PM

True, GUEST Ray, but though Steve Goodman was probably my favorite solo performer I liked Arlo's version of CoNO better.