The way Bill Danoff remembers it, the concrete in the space they were using for a dressing room wasn’t entirely dry that day, the surroundings were so new.
No matter.
It only took Danoff, his then-wife Taffy, and a certain shag-haired singer named John Denver around three minutes or so to absolutely own the crowd, on that long-ago Saturday afternoon of Sept. 6, 1980.
Bill, a folkster and songwriter from Washington, D.C., penned “Country Roads,” that geographically challenged (slightly) singalong which made Denver famous and while cementing the Mountain State’s legend as a destination on AM radio.
The trio came to Morgantown to dedicate the then-new Mountaineer Field, for its first-ever football game.
“Hello, West-by-God-Virginia!” Denver hailed to the Blue and Gold faithful.
When Danoff hit that opening guitar lick, and when he and Taffy and John began to sing the opening lyrics to that above tune, with its homages to moonshine, mountain mamas and winding, Whitmanesque lanes, everybody in the stands joined in – even the opposing fans from the University of Cincinnati.
“The sound came down in waves,” Danoff recalled later with a grin and shake of his head. “It was something.”
Fast-forward to Sunday night in New Orleans.
The 56th edition of the Super Bowl in Caesars’ Superdome.
A mortgage company had just run a sentimental spot about the American dream of buying a house, interspersed with scenes of coming home – using a reflective arrangement of the Danoff-Denver tune as the soundtrack.
The Rocket Mortgage commercial contained images of country roads-type settings that resonated with West Virginians – since many of us do have to take the ex-pat route for work.
An NFL announcer nudged the Superdome sing-along, live, as the spot ended, prompting the Mountain State-inspired emotion about all the above.
Jonathan Mildenhall, Rocket’s chief marketing officer, told the Hollywood trade paper Variety that everything was calculated.
The idea was to build a sense of community and shared space.
Especially, he said, with the Philadelphia and Kansas City faithful knowing the words and joining in live – as he knew they would.
“Let’s be honest,” he said. “‘Take Me Home, Country Roads’ is one of the few songs, probably – I can only think of ‘Sweet Caroline’ – that when you play it anywhere in the world, everyone sings.”
Danoff was thinking the same thing when he and Taffy first played the song for Denver, who could only learn the guitar parts later, since his thumb was in a cast.
He injured his hand in a fender-bender that same evening Danoff debuted the tune for him.
The singer cut the song in 1971, when West Virginia was in the midst of a robust back to the land movement.
More than a few hills and hollows were dotted with communes, even.
That’s why the original contains organic imagery – what Danoff calls the “naked hippie chick verse” – alluding to the dynamic of those days.
Denver, despite his aw-shucks stage persona, was actually pretty savvy about the way of radio and records, Danoff recalls.
“It was a song for its time,” he said.
Still, Denver said, AM program directors most definitely wouldn’t play it with said PG-13 verse, Danoff remembered.
“We got rid of the verse and John said, ‘Far out,’ and went into the studio.”
