Don Rhodes is an entertainment columnist for The Augusta Chronicle.

Ramblin' Rhodes

Denver wasn't well received by music association

Web posted October 17, 1997

By Don Rhodes
Special Columnist

John Denver's death on Sunday came almost 22 years to the day after he set off a controversy by being named the Country Music Association's Entertainer of the Year.

It didn't help matters that he wasn't even in the new Grand Ole Opry House to accept the CMA's top award that Monday night, Oct. 13, 1975, when his name was called. He was halfway around the world performing in Perth, Australia.

``I don't know what to say,'' he said when reached by a reporter. ``Mom and Dad, I hope you're proud of me.''

That wasn't the only CMA trophy he received. He also won the 1975 CMA Song of the Year award (which goes to the songwriter) for his self-composed single (Gee, It's Good To Be) Back Home Again.

But Mr. Denver didn't win the 1975 CMA Single of the Year trophy. That went to Tex-Mex artist Freddy Fender for his tear-jerking ballad Before the Next Teardrop Falls rather than Mr. Denver's Thank God, I'm a Country Boy.

Mr. Denver's selection as the top country artist of the year by CMA voters (thousands of whom don't live in Nashville) added salt to the wounds of country artists still outraged over the 1974 selection of Australian-born Olivia NewtonJohn as the Female Vocalist of the Year. Roy Acuff had even referred to the Aussie as ``Oliver'' Newton-John.

The apparent whiplash effect of Mr. Denver's selection was for CMA voters to bend over backward in naming ultra-country artist Mel Tillis its 1976 Entertainer of the Year.

Country artists and fans like to talk a lot about the close ties of country music to blues, folk songs and Western ballads, but the truth is very few blues, folk or Western artists have ever made it big in country music.

Mr. Denver, however, was a tough one to ignore.

By the end of 1974, Henry John Deutschendorf Jr. (alias John Denver) had become the biggest-selling pop artist in America. He had cracked the country charts three years earlier with his first million-selling single Take Me Home Country Road.

He came along at a time when the country charts indicated that the industry wasn't sure whether to go the rough route of the so-called ``outlaws'' Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson, the dusty path of hardcore country singers Conway Twitty and Loretta Lynn or the smooth highways of B.J. Thomas, Glen Campbell, Barbara Mandrell and Jesi Colter.

Dolly Parton, who won the 1975 CMA Female Vocalist of the Year award, had taken her pop-sounding song The Seeker to No. 1 that year and had followed it that same year with similar pop numbers, Love Is Like a Butterfly and We Used To.

Mr. Denver's last big splash on the country charts came in the '80s with his Wild Montana Skies duet with Emmylou Harris.

In the total picture, Mr. Denver had a tremendous impact on country music and its growth. His concerts, recordings and network television shows enticed a lot of young listeners to give country music a try. His love for the outdoors and his wholesome movies and squeaky-clean public image were in total sync with most country fans, who continued to buy his albums in large numbers.

One of my personal favorite Denver songs is Some Days Are Diamonds (Some Days Are Stones), a ballad composed by guitarist Dick Feller, who wrote Jerry Reed's East Bound and Down and who later toured as a backup musician for Lewis Grizzard.

The song basically says that some days are a whole lot better than others, especially those when ``hard times just won't leave you alone.''

Oct. 13, 1975, for Mr. Denver was a day of diamonds. Oct. 12, 1997, was a day of stones.