Great happy upbeat songs

John Denver (Henry John Deutschendorf, Jr.) was a very good musician. He was a one of a kind country singer, almost never singing traditional country music about death, divorce, and sadness. He always did upbeat songs. This particular CD features all of his hits on the radio and the good clear versions. He tells you in the booklet that these are treated differently than the original recordings, because he was singing better at this time of his life. Tragically, Denver died in 1997 in a plane crash at the age of 53, but his music will carry on forever. The best version of Take Me Home, Country Roads, Rocky Mountain High and Sunshine on my Shoulders are right here on this CD. If you like John Denver, this CD and his other CD Greatest Hits Volume 2 are the ones to get. You will not be disappointed with this CD at all. Rest in Peace John Denver, the mountains always made you "feel at peace."

Stuck in a very narrow time slot

JD had a string of hits over a period of a few months, reaching the apex of his fame with "Rocky Mountain High." It was a time when people could actually talk about "starting a commune" and not get laughed at, when "getting back to nature," starting a compost heap, and passive/almost feminized masculinity were considered hip and enlightened. JD, with his suede jacket, buster brown hairdo, jeans and boots, seemed to be the musical man of the moment. His dorky looks and whiny voice seemed to fit in with the whole countrified hippie lifestyle then aspired to by many in the middle class. JD was locked into that moment and image, however. The commune people found out that you can't leave your sinful and fault filled humanity behind in the city - people suck just as much in Idaho as they do in Manhattan; the middle class found out that being a struggling, poor farmer is neither ennobling nor fun; most men found it nauseating to always have to be gentle and non-aggressive (they also found out that the women - no matter what they might say publicly - left the wimps for the high-achievers, high earners, and other alpha-males). The culture moved on into the high achieving eighties and JD was left behind in the country, confused, neglected, and with an alcohol problem.

Being in musical vogue for a brief time is certainly not an indicator of the true value of your music - great musicians and composers are sometimes only appreciated long after their deaths. In Jd's case, however, the music has little to recommend itself to posterity. There are a handful of very simple but tuneful odes to nature but there are also a large number of embarassingly trite emotional songs that resemble simpleminded greeting cards. Inane lyrics can be redeemed by great music and/or a powerful performance, of course, but JD was incapable of producing either. His performances are whiny and annoying - they come across as the mooning of a lovesick adolescent who mistakes the call of his pubertal hormones and his own emotional neediness for profound romantic love. His melodies, at their best, are merely pleasant.

At the time, JD's songs, because of their subject matter (Mother Nature, endangered species, romantic yearning) were treated with almost sanctimonious reverence. The backlash to that is that he is now easy to mock.

This is a must have

We love and miss our clear blue mountain man. There will never be another like John Denver. Only in hindsight do we know how much you still mean to us.