I'm now officially fascinated; I just did a bit of Googling prior to mentioning one of my own, and what should I find but a nice bit of expert validation, in the form of a commentary with YouTube links, supported a conclusion I've held all along.

Namely, that John Denver's cover of the Steve Gillette/Scott Campbell "Darcy Farrow" is the best of all the versions, not excepting various of Gillette's own. [As it turns out, the Denver performance linked on the above-noted page is blocked; here is a replacement link.]

Now, having said that, I should add that there are a good half dozen recordings on the linked page that are brand new to me, and some of those are very nice indeed. But I think I'm always going to like John Denver's the best....