Almost heaven, West Virginia,Last week someone at lunch pointed out that the Shenandoah River is barely in West Virginia. Check this out:
Blue Ridge Mountains, Shenandoah River.
Way over on the right, in that little spur that sticks out to the east, do you see the blue line that parallels the eastern border? That's the Shenandoah River. Hard to imagine how it might be central to the state's image.
So, my co-worker said the people who wrote the song with John Denver, a couple from this region, weren't even in West Virginia when they were inspired to write it. Here's the scoop from an article on the songwriter's own website:
“Take me home, country road, to the place I belong...”The next few words really should sing out “Montgomery County” [Maryland], not "West Virginia," because that's where the inspiration for the popular tune sung by John Denver came from.
The songwriter. Bill Danoff, and his former wife. Taffy, were inspired to write the popular tune as they were driving down Clopper Road 21 years ago on the way to a Fisher family reunion at the Izaak Walton League.
"It was a real pretty old country road with farms and cows and fields. I thought it would be a great thing to write a song about so we started humming it right then," Danoff said. He and his wife, who were then part of the group Fat City, developed the song and were later helped out by friend, John Denver, who put in his two cents worth and later recorded the hit.
Why West Virginia if the country road was in Maryland? Danoff admitted it just sounded good. He'd never been there he said, but he has gone since – to Harpers Ferry where the Blue Ridge Mountains reach the Shenandoah and "it's everything I said it would be - almost heaven,'' he joked.
--The Gaithersburg Express 9/11/91
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