Taffy Danoff's Take Me Home Country Road

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As a country music song, “Take Me Home Country Roads” was originally created by the couple Bill and Taffy Danoff. They somehow planned to sell to another singer. Nevertheless, their friend John Denver liked it very much. Consequently, they three worked together overnight to come up with the final draft of the lyric; then they played the song together in a Washington D.C. music nightclub as the encore the next night, 22 December 1970. Surprisingly, they won a storm of five-minute unanimous ovation. As a very nostalgic country music song, it had been touching the hearts of Vietnam War soldiers and their relatives around that time frame. Rapidly since then, people in the states and even worldwide have been listening, appreciating, and singing …show more content…

People enjoy it, even Hillary Clinton quoted, “almost heaven” in a 2008 West Virginia presidential championship. To symbolize the beautiful scenery of the traveler’s hometown, the songwriter extols the Blue Ridge Mountains and Shenandoah River, which cross the northeastern territory of West Virginia. In the last two lines of that first verse, “Life is old there, older than the trees, younger than the mountains, growing like a breeze,” the songwriter yearns for the traditional old lifestyle of the native land, where the life is growing comfortably and slowly like a warm …show more content…

“All my memories, gather round her” opens this verse and naturally indicates the nostalgic nature of this song. “Miner’s lady, stranger to blue water” is the lady gathered around by the memories of the lonesome traveler. West Virginia is an inland state, poor residents seldom, if not never, visited the international metropoles, which were usually by the blue water ocean in the days of yore, when air cargo and air travel were not as popular as today. Consequently, the local miners’ lifestyles were pristine, and their characteristic is simple and honest. Therefore, the traveler cherishes them after he experienced the sophisticated, cruel and cunning people in the metropolis. In addition to narrating the nature of the memorable residents, the songwriter then describes the empathetic life there. Because the hometown is full of coal mines, the miners’ working environment is filthy, full of air and water pollution. Due to air pollution, the sky and air turns dark and dusty; however, the residents have to withstand the poor quality of life. Because of water pollution, the locally brewed illicit liquor tastes misty; yet, they can afford only such low quality “moonshine”, which is their slang of illicit liquor. Because the people are unsophisticated and they live a low quality life, the traveler felt

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