Thank God I'm a Country Boy

This weekend I came inside to get some cold water after working in the garden.  Tricia was in the kitchen and had music playing on a speaker from her phone.  She was listening to John Denver's Greatest Hits.  Did that ever bring back some childhood memories!

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Growing up, we had John Denver's Greatest hits album and I think my brother, sister and I knew the words to most every song.  In fact, I fondly remember that when my cousin, Patrick would come visit us from Dallas, we would have concerts in my Grandma's living room for my parents, grandparents and my aunt and uncle in which we'd sing:

• Thank God I'm a Boy (I got me a fine wife, got me old fiddle...)
• Grandma's Feather Bed
• and Country Roads (Take me home, country roads, to the place I belong...)

I laugh and think that it probably took the patience of Job for them to sit and listen to our 'concerts!'

John Denver's music was so good.  As I stood in the kitchen on Saturday and listened to him sing Leaving on a Jet Plane, Rocky Mountain High and Annie's Song, the memories of childhood flooded over me.  Annie's Song is perhaps the most sincere love song I've heard:

You fill up my senses like a night in a forest,

Like the mountains in springtime,

Like a walk in the rain, like a storm in the desert,

Like a sleepy blue ocean.

You fill up my senses, come fill me again.

Come let me love you, let me give my life to you,

Let me drown in your laughter, let me die in your arms.

Let me lay down beside you, let me always be with you.

Come, let me love you, come love me again.

A little John Denver trivia I learned:

• John Denver was born on New Year's Eve in 1943 in Roswell, New Mexico,
• He wrote the song Country Roads about West Virginia country roads, but had never been to West Virginia,
• John Denver's real name was Henry John Deutschendorf.  I think he picked a good name to sing under!
• There is a monument for him in Aspen, Colorado
• He died on October 12, 1997 near Pacific Grove, California when the experimental plane he was piloting crashed.

I was thinking about all the singers I could think of that died in plane crashes.  Right off-hand, other than John Denver, I can think of Jim Croce, Buddy Holly, Ricky Nelson, Patsy Cline.  I looked up on the Internet and it reminded me that Glenn Miller and Reba McIntire's entire band died in plane crashes as well.

Although John Denver died an early and untimely death, his music and the memories invoked by his songs still live on...