“Take Me Home, Country Roads”
Song by Ray Charles
Ray Charles’ unusual but enjoyable version of John Denver’s “Take Me Home, Country Roads” appeared on his 1972 album A Message From The People and also as the B-side of a single from the LP.
Denver’s version was a huge hit in 1971 and was immediately the subject of several cover versions. In Ray’s take, his voice is double-tracked and he indulges in some riotous self-conversation, especially towards the end of the recording.
Ray, born in Albany, Georgia but raised in the green and bucolic Greenville, Florida, must have found it very easy to relate to the song’s exultation of the natural beauty of West Virginia. It was written by the husband-and-wife team of Bill Danoff and Mary “Taffy” Nivert plus John Denver. (Danoff had never actually visited West Virginia, and in fact many of the lyrics describe places not generally identified as West Virginian.)
Denver’s “Take Me Home, Country Roads” became a state song of West Virginia in 2014 – years after Ray’s own “Georgia On My Mind” became the state song of Georgia.
Ray’s version of “Take Me Home, Country Roads” begins with a slow, tense buildup that promises an enthusiastic payoff, and it soon comes with Ray’s band establishing an agreeably woodsy country rhythm and Ray settling into a relaxed, happy vocal performance about the blessings of West Virginia and its “almost heaven”-ly mountains and rivers.
It’s mostly on the choruses that Ray’s hilarious and strange self-duet exerts itself. “Oh, I like that!” he cries in one aside; “Me too!” he answers himself in the other speaker. (He also transposes the second and third verses, just because.) The cheerful electronic solo sounds like a harmonium, an odd choice for Ray but one that somehow emphasizes the natural setting of the song, with its incandescent vibrations and beckoning warmth.
By the latter part of the performance, Ray is duetting with himself so loosely, propped up by an energized but decidedly more sober choir, that “Take Me Home, Country Roads” begins to take on a party atmosphere, even if the party is being attended by a bunch of Ray Charleses sauntering under the trees and chewing on long pieces of grass under sunny straw hats.
Single releases
“Every Saturday Night”
b/w
“Take Me Home, Country Roads”
Listen to “Take Me Home, Country Roads”
Get your own “Take Me Home, Country Roads” on 45, LP, CD or MP3 from Amazon. Or get the out-of-print complete ABC singles 5xCD box set.
Songs on A Message From The People