The Country Roads Collection

by

John Denver

Edit

This is not for the neophyte John Denver fan. [They would be better served by the recently released 2-disc Portrait or the single disc Greatest Country Hits.] But true fans of the late John Denver will settle for nothing less than this sprawling 4-disc, 79-song box set. And even at that, this is not a complete retrospective, being limited to his 1969 to 1986 tenure at RCA. [So there are no songs from his stint with the Chad Mitchell Trio or anything from the albums he released on his own Windstar label after leaving RCA.] But what you do get shows the breadth and depth of one of America's best singer-songwriters of the past half century.

Of course, you get all the hits--fifteen top forty hits in all, and six of them sold at least a million copies!

Disc-1 covers his first four albums, beginning with the song which gave him his first national exposure as a songwriter--the lovely "Leaving on a Jet Plane" from 1969's Rhymes and Reasons (and covered by Peter, Paul & Mary who take it to No. 1). It wasn't until his fourth album, "Poems, Prayers, and Promises," that he charted with the single "Take Me Home, Country Roads."

Disc-2 essentially covers Denver's peak commercial years (1972-75). "Annie's Song," "Thank God I'm a Country Boy" and "Calypso" all went to No. 1. His anthemic "Rocky Mountain High" epitomized the wholesome, down-home qualities of this all-American boy next door. And perhaps it was these same qualities which became his undoing. As the seventies wore on and musical tastes changed, a fickle record-buying public were no longer enthralled with the bespectacled "country boy."

Disc-3 sees the hits charting lower and lower. In fact, Denver's last hit of the seventies, 1977's "My Sweet Lady," was originally the flip side of 1975's "Thank God I'm a Country Boy." This is not to say he wasn't still turning out quality music. Listen to the gorgeous "How Can I Leave You Again," or "I Want To Live" or "Autograph" to remind yourself that Denver was still writing beautiful songs.

Disc-4 contains his only two hits from the eighties: the mournful "Some Days Are Diamonds (Some Days Are Stone)" and the lovely "Shanghai Breeze." However, the highlight is Denver's duet with Emmylou Harris on "Wild Montana Skies."

Denver amassed a substantial body of work during his seventeen years with RCA. This collection does an excellent job of providing a complete picture of the artistry of John Denver. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED