Poems, Prayers & Promises Norristown PA

Poems, Prayers & Promises

John Denver

RCA Records, 1971

REVIEW BY: Christopher Thelen

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED: 11/16/1997

When John Denver died in a plane crash last month, we lost one of America's last remaining folksingers and premier storytellers... and we were too fucking stupid to appreciate him his whole career.

The country music world treated him like a bastard son because they didn't consider him a true country artist. The rest of us wrote him off as a relic of the '70s -- while we were rediscovering stupid shit like bell-bottoms and disco, Denver's work remained locked up in the mothballs, known only to a select few who were smart enough to appreciate his work.

But if it took Denver's death for us to rediscover his work, so be it -- after listening to his 1971 work Poems, Prayers & Promises it makes me sad that I was also one of the people who didn't appreciate Denver until it was too late.

Maybe the country music industry was correct - Denver really isn't a country artist. From his days in The Mitchell Trio (trivia question: who did he replace in the group? E-mail me with the answer. C'mon, gang, this one's easier than it sounds.), his forte was in folk. The title track is a prime example of this, combining his rich voice with some fancier-than-you'd-think guitar work, Denver sings the wonders of life and how fragile it is.