I have been watching John Denver Day crap on Colorado public TV all day.
He was an accepted legend of Colorado growing up and “thank God I’m a country boy” was a standard of it on which he played good-ol-boy fiddle.
But tonight I noticed on every fiddlle-ish track they had a bunch of wierd cuts from odd angles carefully not showing him stringin’ the fiddle. Was it always that way? I know he was a major drunk and maybe he the long term shakes or something later, but was he a real fiddler that anybody knows? or was it a sham from the beginning?
No idea. But when I saw him live he had someone else do the fiddle parts of that song.
Mind you, he had a string quartet for some songs already so one of those folks may have been convenient (it was just him otherwise) so this isn’t a definitive answer.
I seem to remember from ages ago that the fiddle player was somebody relatively famous in the bluegrass circuit. I.e., not John Denver. But I don’t have a link for you and, hey, my memory could be playing me false.
[Bit of a hijack]It’s John Denver Day? Weird. Because last night I was fooling around on CMT.com and I clicked on Old John. They had a video there of a song I liked a lot when it came out – “Don’t Close Your Eyes Tonight” and I watched it. I still like the song, but the video is pretty dated (it’s from the mid-80s. John played the lead in the video and it’s pretty sexy – lots of kissing and a sort of sweaty semi-nekkid love scene. He wasn’t playing a fiddle anyway – not unless you mean that euphemistically. One thing that struck me was that John looked very, very smooth – boy had some facial work, I betcha. His eyes were so tight he looked almost Asian.[/hijack]
[hijack with extreme prejudice]They actually had some neat older videos there – they had the video of “Silver Stallion” by The Highwaymen. Also sort of dated – WIlle had a terrifying Billy-Ray Cyrus mullet! – but I always liked the song and video and still do…[/hyjack]
PBS usually saves popular broadcasts for their pledge drives. No doubt wolfman is referring such a beg-a-thon (or other PBS drivel) that is appearing between actual performances.
Bear in mind, “Thank God I’m a Country Boy” was one of the few John Denver hits that he DIDN’T write! It was written by John Sommers, who played fiddle and guitar in Denver’s band.
I’ve never heard of John Denver playing the fiddle… but if he did, he apparently didn’t think he was good enough to play it in live settings, because he always left the fiddle parts to other members of his touring band.
I used to jokingly say John Denver and I started together.
Back in his early, early career days, I was a bus boy/ski bum in the same restraunt in which Denver was performing and I saw him almost daily a couple times a night for a number of months. Granted it was early in his career, but I will say that in those days, I never saw him play a fiddle. Guitar, banjo and mandolin, yes, but no fiddle. As I said, it was early in his career and he could have picked it up later or he might not have felt his fiddle playing was at a performance level.
And we were close in those days. Daily when he would come in through the kitchen, I would say, “Hey Dutch,” and quick as a wink he would say, “Hey,…um…ah…um…there.”
In the last live JD concert I went to, he played the fiddle on “Country Boy”.
Now, granted - he didn’t play it as well as John Sommers. But it was adequate. And we all had a ton of fun with it. He set it up quite well, telling everyone words to the effect of, “Well, I’ve been threatening to do this for years. Now it’s time to come through.”. When he walked over and picked up the fiddle, the audience went ape.
And when it was done, we gave him a standing O. I don’t know if he did that for the rest of that tour or not, but he sure did it in Houston that night.
