THE NIGHT CLUB DOORMAN WHO WROTE "COUNTRY ROADS"

 

John Denver did NOT write the original draft of “Country Roads,” the official song of West Virginia and one I sing with a song in my heart in Mountaineer Field after WVU wins the football game.

That was a night club doorman, Bill Danoff, who wrote “Country Roads” first draft. And the original title was “Rhododendron,” for the official state flower of West Virginia, but it provided to be too cumbersome to rhyme.

Danoff was a doorman at the tiny Cellar Door nightclub in Washington, D.C., later the lighting and sound technician for years before he ever performed at the club at the corner of 34th and M streets NW with Danoff’s then-wife Mary Catherine “Taffy” Nivert Danoff as performers in Fat City, a Georgetown-based folk music band. 

Taffy got her nickname because her older brother as a young child mispronounced her name as Mary Tafferine.

Later the couple joined with Jon Carroll and Margot Chapman to form the Grammy-winning Starland Vocal Band that signed with Denver’s Windsong Records and record their most famous song, “Afternoon Delight.”

Danoff and Taffy had hoped to show their “Country Roads” to Johnny Cash, who they didn’t know personally, because they liked the Man in Black’s opening chords. They reversed the chords for “Country Roads.”

Danoff showed his “Country Roads” draft to John Denver. Then Danoff and Denver, with Taffy holding the sheet music, altered it to its present form. They stayed up all night polishing the song.

These are the lyrics that Danoff thought would be too colorful for 1970s radio so he dropped them:

In the foothills,
Hidin’ from the clouds,
Pink and purple,
West Virginia farm house,
Naked ladies,
Men who look like Christ,
And a dog named Poncho nibbling on the rice,
Country roads

The next night at the Cellar Door on December 30, 1970, Denver called Bill and Taffy to the stage for an encore, where they performed the finished version of "Take Me Home, Country Roads" in public for the first time.

A few days later they were in the studio recording the song. Danoff had to play the lead guitar because of Denver’s broken thumb from an auto accident.

And “Country Roads” took off into music history!

Danoff was picking at his guitar while Taffy drove on a country road in Maryland to her family reunion when the germ of a song idea came into his head. Let him explain how “West Virgina” entered the music:

“I’m a songwriter. I was looking for words. The words that I loved in that song were Blue Ridge Mountains, Shenandoah River. They’re songwriter words, so that got me to West Virginia.”

It was Taffy who worked on “Rhododendron,” the song’s original title because that is the state flower of West Virginia. When coming up with words that rhymed with “rhododendron” became too tough, Taffy checked the encyclopedia for West Virginia further and came up with “Blue Ridge Mountains” and “Shenandoah River” even though they are mostly in Virginia, but also in Jefferson County, West Virginia.  

Danoff had never been to West Virginia. The state’s words just spoke to him.

Since, Danoff has visited West Virginia several times and even waded into the Shenandoah River that he made re-famous. He was named an honorary West Virginian.

And John Denver is his favorite singer of “Country Roads”? Nope. “Ray Charles,” Danoff said, as his voice cracks as if to hold back a tear. “That broke my heart. Ray Charles is incredible, he’s an idol – he sings one of your songs, it's pretty good.”

“Country Roads” did good, too, to speak a West Virginia term.

The song soared to #1 on the Record World pop singles chart and the Cash Box Top 100 and number 2 on Billboard, behind "How Can You Mend a Broken Heart" by The Bee Gees. “Country Road” went gold in sales in 1971 and got a second shot to go platinum in 2017. More than 1.6 million copies have been sold in America.

Denver sang “Country Roads” at the opening of new Mountaineer Field before the first WVU game there in 1980. WVU fans sing it after every Mountaineer victory, in Morgantown or on the road. The West Virginia Legislature made it one of four official state songs in 2014. And “Almost Heaven” from the song has become a state slogan slapped on everything handed to tourists.

“Country Roads” was played at the funeral for legendary and influential West Virginia Senator Robert Byard at the State Capitol in Charleston on July 2, 2010.

I have instructed my family to play it as my farewell song at my funeral before I am laid to rest at Northlawn Memorial Gardens alongside my personal Mona Lisa (as I called my wife, a play on her name of Monia Elizabeth, for decades) under a double grave marker with “WV” under Monnie’s name and my name.

For me it will be a permanent “Take Me Home, Country Roads”! Joining my Mountain Mama for all time.