Denver Nugget

Happy Anni-hearse-ary™ to nature boy-ish folk warbler John “Denver" Colorado. This “aw shucks” singer, songwriter, variety show host, game show contestant and sometime puppeteer will forever be remembered for his gentle ode to a lass named Annie, who filled up his senses like a night in the forest, until the lawyers got involved and — in protest over the divorce settlement — he took a chainsaw to the bloody marital bed. A real-life Appalachian Mountain man — and eldest son of prominent Mayberry jug band leader Denver "Pyle" Colorado — John Denver was a welcome, clean-cut change of pace from the hirsute — which is to say, hair-suited — dope tokers of the era. In his trademarked granny glasses, velour vests and Aussie® conditioned, fly-away straw bangs, this teetotaling troubadour got high on the sunshine on his shoulders, or possibly the sleepy blue ocean. When it came to lyrics — that is, the words, which often precede melody, but not always — Denver was a veritable statesman. He sang about the Colorado Rocky Mountains, where he witnessed hellfire raining in the sky. He sang of the country roads of Western Virginia and the sunshine — again with the sunshine! — in the Carolina in his mind. Alabammy, where the skies are so blue (and, we'll assume, sunshiney). Oklahoma, where the broom-handled wind comes sweeping down the plains. He sang of a Wichita, Kansas phone lineman and of American soldiers returning to a hero’s welcome on the shores of Galveston, Texas. What he didn’t sing was that goddamned “Delaware” song — “What did Delaware, boy? She wore a brand New Jersey. She called to say Hawaii. She sipped a Minnesota. She went to pay her Texas.” For that we can thank Perry Como or Jerry Vale or some other martini tosser of the day. Denver’s only misstep along the way was fathering a sandy-haired lookalike who took up residence as Cousin Oliver in television's cojoined Brady household, where bedlam ensued and ratings plummeted. Alas, 'twas the would-be pilot himself who plummeted — to his death — on October 12, 1997, after hastily scribbling a Post-It™ note on the counter of his mountain home — likely a log cabin with a compost-producing toilet. “I’m leaving on a jet plane,” the note read, “I don’t know when I’ll be back again.” True to his word, he never returned. We remember him with fondness, sadness and slight irritation over those movies with that cigar-chomping, wise-cracking centenarian actor bloke. "Oh God," is bloody right. John Denver, RIP.