Post by erik on Jan 15, 2022 13:34:07 GMT -5
While originally a product of the 1960's Greenwich Village folk music scene, John Denver was very much a man of his native West, as can be gauged by the song of his in this week's Pop Music Hits Spotlight.
I’D RATHER BE A COWBOY (LADY’S CHAINS) (John Denver; RCA; 1973)—For as much criticism as John Denver got during the height of his popularity in the early-to-mid 1970’s, he was nevertheless an important artist at the vanguard of a movement of combining country, folk, rock, and pop with his own particular songwriting style. That songwriting style had developed during his time in the Chad Mitchell Trio in the mid-1960s, and going solo in 1967 by performing in many of the same Greenwich Village clubs that nurtured the whole 1960’s urban folk music explosion. One of his songs, “Leaving On A Jet Plane”, of course, became a #1 hit for Peter, Paul, and Mary at the end of 1969. For much of his life, Denver was to explore his impressions of life, love, nature, and the West, partly because of having been born in Roswell, New Mexico. On his seventh album Farewell Andromeda, released in the wake of his big 1973 hit “Rocky Mountain High”, Denver caught some of the zeitgeist of the New Western movement in popular music, with one of his lesser-known songs, “I’d Rather Be A Cowboy (Lady’s Chains)”. The story of a cowboy who allows the love of his life to find something better in Los Angeles, though he doesn’t care to live in a world full of canyons of concrete and steel, “I’d Rather Be A Cowboy” was fated to have an admittedly short life on the charts, peaking at #62 on the Billboard Hot 100 in July 1973. In the eyes of a lot of his fellow musicians, both in the New York City folk music scene and the L.A. country-rock scene, however, it was very close in spirit to what the Eagles were doing for their classic album Desperado, and Bob Dylan for his soundtrack to director Sam Peckinpah’s Western opus Pat Garrett And Billy The Kid. Over the ensuing couple of years, however, the clean-cut Denver would become the target of a lot of misdirected ire from Nashville for having so many of his songs on the country and the pop charts at the same time, even as many of those songs, recorded both in New York and Los Angeles, sounded suspicious far more “country” than what Nashville was producing during that time
I’D RATHER BE A COWBOY (LADY’S CHAINS) (John Denver; RCA; 1973)—For as much criticism as John Denver got during the height of his popularity in the early-to-mid 1970’s, he was nevertheless an important artist at the vanguard of a movement of combining country, folk, rock, and pop with his own particular songwriting style. That songwriting style had developed during his time in the Chad Mitchell Trio in the mid-1960s, and going solo in 1967 by performing in many of the same Greenwich Village clubs that nurtured the whole 1960’s urban folk music explosion. One of his songs, “Leaving On A Jet Plane”, of course, became a #1 hit for Peter, Paul, and Mary at the end of 1969. For much of his life, Denver was to explore his impressions of life, love, nature, and the West, partly because of having been born in Roswell, New Mexico. On his seventh album Farewell Andromeda, released in the wake of his big 1973 hit “Rocky Mountain High”, Denver caught some of the zeitgeist of the New Western movement in popular music, with one of his lesser-known songs, “I’d Rather Be A Cowboy (Lady’s Chains)”. The story of a cowboy who allows the love of his life to find something better in Los Angeles, though he doesn’t care to live in a world full of canyons of concrete and steel, “I’d Rather Be A Cowboy” was fated to have an admittedly short life on the charts, peaking at #62 on the Billboard Hot 100 in July 1973. In the eyes of a lot of his fellow musicians, both in the New York City folk music scene and the L.A. country-rock scene, however, it was very close in spirit to what the Eagles were doing for their classic album Desperado, and Bob Dylan for his soundtrack to director Sam Peckinpah’s Western opus Pat Garrett And Billy The Kid. Over the ensuing couple of years, however, the clean-cut Denver would become the target of a lot of misdirected ire from Nashville for having so many of his songs on the country and the pop charts at the same time, even as many of those songs, recorded both in New York and Los Angeles, sounded suspicious far more “country” than what Nashville was producing during that time