Post by erik on Jul 24, 2021 17:29:01 GMT -5
Though he was a despised figure during his lifetime among the country music crowd, the case can be made nowadays for John Denver being much more "country" than those who lay claim to that moniker in our time. Case in point, the early 1977 bluegrass-influenced hit in this week's Pop Music Hits Spotlight.
BABY YOU LOOK GOOD TO ME TONIGHT (John Denver; RCA; 1976)—Despite all the success he had in a career that lasted from his time in the mid-1960’s as a member of the Chad Mitchell Trio until his traffic death in a plane crash in 1997, John Denver was never the critics’ favorite by any means. Born in New Mexico and a long-time resident of the nearby state of Colorado, Denver (born Henry John Deutschendof) came out of the same Greenwich Village folk music scene that gave the world Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, and Peter, Paul, and Mary (whose cover of Denver’s “Leaving On A Jet Plane” was a #1 hit near the end of 1969). During the 1970’s, for better (in the eyes of audiences and his peers) or worse (in the minds of critics), Denver parlayed a huge amount of success that was arguably fairly middle-of-the-road stuff dealing with nature, love of Western mountain life, and actual family values. This often involved him integrating decidedly country and bluegrass instrumentation into many of his hits, including “Thank God I’m A Country Boy”; and coming from a 1960’s folk music background, the very presence of his songs on the Billboard country singles chart during his apex in the mid-1970’s made him a hugely hated figure in Nashville. Arguably, however, his penchant for utilizing those traditional country instruments made his songs more authentically “country” than what was on country radio at the time (certainly even more so than in 2021). One such example is on his late 1976 album release Spirit. “Baby You Look Good To Me Tonight”, written by long-time friend Bill Danoff, who, with his wife Taffy, had a #1 pop hit in 1976 with “Afternoon Delight” as the Starland Vocal Band, and had also written Denver’s own 1971 breakthrough hit “Take Me Home Country Roads”, utilized close background harmony vocals, plus Dobro (courtesy of Steve Weissberg) and banjo (John Somers) that were of a piece with bluegrass. Although not necessarily a big pop hit (it peaked at only #65 in February 1977), it did peak at #22 on the country singles chart; and it became a well-respected standard among modern bluegrass aficionados. Denver’s stock with audiences rose once more after a period of commercial lethargy when he appeared with the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band on that group’s multi-disc project Will The Circle Be Unbroken, Volume 2 in 1989; his contribution, a cover of the Paul Overstreet/Don Schlitz song “And So It Goes” hit #14 on the country chart in the late summer of 1989.
BABY YOU LOOK GOOD TO ME TONIGHT (John Denver; RCA; 1976)—Despite all the success he had in a career that lasted from his time in the mid-1960’s as a member of the Chad Mitchell Trio until his traffic death in a plane crash in 1997, John Denver was never the critics’ favorite by any means. Born in New Mexico and a long-time resident of the nearby state of Colorado, Denver (born Henry John Deutschendof) came out of the same Greenwich Village folk music scene that gave the world Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, and Peter, Paul, and Mary (whose cover of Denver’s “Leaving On A Jet Plane” was a #1 hit near the end of 1969). During the 1970’s, for better (in the eyes of audiences and his peers) or worse (in the minds of critics), Denver parlayed a huge amount of success that was arguably fairly middle-of-the-road stuff dealing with nature, love of Western mountain life, and actual family values. This often involved him integrating decidedly country and bluegrass instrumentation into many of his hits, including “Thank God I’m A Country Boy”; and coming from a 1960’s folk music background, the very presence of his songs on the Billboard country singles chart during his apex in the mid-1970’s made him a hugely hated figure in Nashville. Arguably, however, his penchant for utilizing those traditional country instruments made his songs more authentically “country” than what was on country radio at the time (certainly even more so than in 2021). One such example is on his late 1976 album release Spirit. “Baby You Look Good To Me Tonight”, written by long-time friend Bill Danoff, who, with his wife Taffy, had a #1 pop hit in 1976 with “Afternoon Delight” as the Starland Vocal Band, and had also written Denver’s own 1971 breakthrough hit “Take Me Home Country Roads”, utilized close background harmony vocals, plus Dobro (courtesy of Steve Weissberg) and banjo (John Somers) that were of a piece with bluegrass. Although not necessarily a big pop hit (it peaked at only #65 in February 1977), it did peak at #22 on the country singles chart; and it became a well-respected standard among modern bluegrass aficionados. Denver’s stock with audiences rose once more after a period of commercial lethargy when he appeared with the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band on that group’s multi-disc project Will The Circle Be Unbroken, Volume 2 in 1989; his contribution, a cover of the Paul Overstreet/Don Schlitz song “And So It Goes” hit #14 on the country chart in the late summer of 1989.