Rocky Mountain High (RCA)

Performer: John Denver
Producer: Milton Okun
Distributor: BMG (distributor)

Notes: Arrangers: Dick Kniss; Mike Taylor . Propelled by the title track, Rocky Mountain High became John Denver's first Top Ten album. Though Denver still couldn't figure out how to fill out an entire album without covering his betters (in this case, old favorites the Beatles and John Prine), he and his steady backup musicians, bassist Dick Kniss and guitarist Mike Taylor, were evolving into an exuberant folk-country sound that would prove enormously appealing over the next few years. The album contained one of Denver's finest ballads, "Goodbye Again," as well as one of his better old songs, "For Baby (For Bobbie)." ~ William Ruhlmann ROCKY MOUNTAIN HIGH heightened John Denver's profile as one of the key folk singers of the 1970s. The record became the artist's first to hit the Top 10 on the strength of its expansive, memorable title track and an overall sound distinguished by a more fully fleshed band, including backing vocals, fiddle, and lap steel. As opposed to ROCKY MOUNTAIN HIGH's predecessor POEM, PRAYERS AND PROMISES, there is some percussion here as well. The album is suffused, in lyrical content and its earthy, folky sound, with a feel for open, outdoor spaces (which reflected the singer's growing environmental activism). Even Denver's choices of cover songs, which includes the Beatles' "Mother Nature's Son" and John Prine's "Paradise," feature pastoral imagery, as do his originals "For Baby (For Bobbie)" and the lovely, melancholic "Goodbye Again." The album's closing suite takes the listener on a musical journey from "Summer" to "Spring," and puts a cap on this '70s folk classic.

Rolling Stone (10/26/72, p.56) - "..a crisp, muscular album with compelling singing and some of the most powerful acoustic guitar-dominated arrangements...in years.."

As John Denver, the former John Henry Deutschendorf was a ubiquitous icon of the 1970s. Although he had been a musician and songwriter in the 1960s, penning "Leaving on a Jet Plane" for Peter, Paul & Mary, Denver hit his stride in the '70s with earnest folk songs celebrating the glories of the natural world and life's simple pleasures. Although he was sometimes savaged by critics for his overarching earnestness, his songs speak for themselves, and his records still sell in large numbers. In the wake of his premature death in a 1997 plane crash, a number of contemporary artists have recorded Denver's songs, without any hint of irony.

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