Rocky Mountain High (RCA)

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

Notes: Recording information: 1972. Arrangers: Dick Kniss; Mike Taylor. 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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