Published: September 11, 2008 07:11 pm      

COLUMN: Denver’s songs part of Colorado, WVU lore

MORGANTOWN — Let’s see, what shall we call this upcoming collegiate football engagement between the University of Colorado and West Virginia University?

Hmmmmmm.

Ahhhhhhhhh!

Eureka!

Welcome to the John Denver Bowl.

You understand, right?

“Country roads, take me home

To the place, I be-long

West Virginia, mountain momma

Take me home, country roads”

And …

“But the Colorado Rocky Mountain high

I’ve seen it rainin’ fire in the sky

The shadow from the starlight is softer than a lullaby

Rocky Mountain high (high Colorado) Rocky Mountain high (high Colorado)”

That’s right, both are John Denver songs.

He lived, you know, in Colorado and he was here in Morgantown for the opening of the Mountaineer Field in 1980 to sing “Take Me Home, Country Roads.”

The song, of course, has become the state anthem in West Virginia, if not its official state song. (In Colorado “Rocky Mountain High” is one of two official state songs.)

In West Virginia it has come to stand not only for the beauty and lore of the state, but for triumph on the football field, a song WVU players and fans sing at the end of each home victory, the one legacy from Rich Rodriguez that should last forever.

The two songs are inspired by the natural beauty of each state, although “Take Me Home, Country Roads” should carry something of an asterisk.

Research shows that the song originated with a pair of folk singers — Bill Danoff and Taffy Nivert — who take co-writing credits with Denver. Around Christmas 1970, Denver suffered a broken left thumb in an automobile accident near Washington, D.C., and was told about this song Danoff and Nivert had been working on after coming home from the hospital.

The inspiration, they said, came when they were driving to a Nivert family reunion on Clopper Road in nearby Montgomery County, Maryland. While driving the winding roads, Nivert began writing the ballad.

She and Danoff later changed the scene to West Virginia, fitting what an artist friend had told them about The Mountain State.

In his autobiography, Denver admits when he heard them do the song, “I flipped.”

They stayed up until 6 a.m., changing words and moving lines until the song was complete.

“It has to go on my next album,” Denver proclaimed.

They premiered the song at The Cellar Door during an encore, the singers reading the words off a folded piece of paper. The five-minute ovation they received is said to be the longest ever in the famous folk music establishment.

The song was put on Denver’s album “Poems, Prayers and Promises” in 1971, was released as a single in August of that year, slowly climbed the charts, then caught fire and jumped to No. 2.

John Denver had put West Virginia on the map.

But it was just a beginning. Just as Frank Sinatra did “Chicago” and “New York, New York,” Denver had the state of Colorado and the city whose name he had stolen to replace his birth name of John Deutschendorf, Jr. on his mind.

This song was inspired on an August evening when Denver was camping with friends at the tree line at Williams Lake near Windstar when the yearly Perseid Meteor Shower began.

In his autobiography, Denver wrote, “I remember, almost to the moment, when that song started to take shape in my head.”

Denver said he had his guitar and his fishing rod with him.

“At some point, I went off in a raft to the middle of the lake, singing my heart out. It wasn’t so much that I was singing to entertain anyone back on shore, but rather I was singing for the mountains and the sky.”

His voice eventually gave out, he returned to shore, and not long after that the meteor shower began. Denver wrote the “it was raining fire in the sky” line right then and his chorus had begun.

John Denver had another anthem and another hit, although he never could imagine this beautiful song would start off a storm of controversy, the Federal Communications Commission cracking down on music that was deemed to be promoting drug use.

The song was banned on some stations until Denver explained that the “high” he was getting here was brought on not by drugs but by the peace and beauty the natural land.

And so it is that while this coming football game is a crucial one for each team, let us not forget that there is another side to Colorado and West Virginia, a side that only John Denver could capture in a pair of songs that will live forever in each state.

E-mail Bob Hertzel at bhertzel@hotmail.com.