Tag: Dick Kniss

John Denver’s First Number One Song

In March 1974, John Denver had his first number one song with “Sunshine on My Shoulders,” aided by a number of factors.

Sunshine on My Shoulders

On March 30, 1974, John Denver’s song “Sunshine on My Shoulders” became his first number one hit. The song — co-written by Denver, Dick Kniss, and Mike Taylor — first appeared on the album Poems Prayers & Promises in 1971. After originally appearing as a B-side to “I’d Rather Be a Cowboy (Lady’s Chains),” the song was then re-released as an A-side single in 1973.

Denver’s previous single, “Rocky Mountain High” was a hit too, but it only went to number nine in 1973 on the Hot 100 chart. The timing  may have had something to do with the popularity of “Sunshine on My Shoulder.” The song about sunshine warming you up might be popular as winter was coming to a close in March.

There is another reason the timing may have helped the song’s popularity. The sad-sounding song might might have received a boost from the fact that the nation was in a melancholy mood as the Watergate scandal dragged on in 1974.

Another reason that “Sunshine on My Shoulders” may have gotten a boost to be Denver’s first number one song is that in 1973 the song had appeared in a TV movie, “Sunshine,” which starred Cliff DeYoung and Cristina Raines. The sad sound of the song perfectly fit the storyline, about a woman who learns she has terminal cancer and then starts to tape record a journal for her musician-husband and their daughter.

In the movie, which later led to a short-lived TV series, Cliff DeYoung sings “Sunshine on My Shoulders.” You may hear the version DeYoung, who was in a band before he began his acting career, on YouTube (around the five-minute mark).

More recently, Carly Rae Jepson covered the song for a new generation. Her version appears on her 2008 album Tug of War.

Despite the sad sound of the original version, the lyrics are more uplifting than depressing. Things cannot be too bad if the singer promises, “If I had a day that I could give you, I’d give to you a day just like today.” Further, the only crying is from sunshine in the eyes.  And most of the time sunshine makes the singer high.

Denver, who passed away in October 1997, explained in 1974 that he wrote “Sunshine on My Shoulders” because he was feeling down and “wanted to write a feeling-blue song.” But he realized that the song ended up being more optimistic than he had originally intended. The song “is what came out.”

What is your favorite John Denver song? Leave your two cents in the comments.

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    Peter Paul & Mary’s First Contract . . . and Puff

    Peter Paul & Mary signed their first recording contract on January 29, 1962.  Thus began a recording career with Warner Brothers that would help bring folk music and Bod Dylan’s music to a broad audience.

    That broader audience included me when I was a kid. We did not have Bob Dylan albums in my house when I was a kid, but we did have Peter Paul & Mary’s second album, Moving (1963), which included “Puff the Magic Dragon.” The trio and “Puff” eventually led me to Dylan and other folk singers. They even led me to John Denver with their cover of “Leavin’ on a Jet Plane.”

    Although today I only have a couple of Peter Paul & Mary albums, I have a huge collection of Dylan and other folk songs that they helped me discover. So, while some hear them and think of a group less authentic than some other folk singers because of their smooth harmonies and the way the group formed, I hear the joy in their music.  And I appreciate the role they played in my music education.

    “Puff the Magic Dragon”

    The story of “Puff the Magic Dragon” began in 1958 when Leonard Lipton, who was a Cornell student, found inspiration in Ogden Nash’s “The Tale of Custard the Dragon.” Lipton used that inspiration to write his own poem about a dragon.

    Lipton showed his poem to another Cornell student, Peter Yarrow, who added music and additional lyrics. Not much later, Manager Albert Grossman, looking to capitalize on the growing folk music trend, put together what he saw as a commercial pairing of Yarrow with Peter Stookey and Mary Travers.

    Thus began Peter Paul & Mary.  The new group recorded “Puff the Magic Dragon” in 1962, and it went on to rise to #2 on the Billboard charts.

    What is “Puff” About?

    Several years after “Puff the Magic Dragon” was released, rumors started about drug references in the song. Yarrow and Lipton have both explained that the song is really about a loss of innocence, and Lipton has compared the story to Peter Pan on his blog.

    Many decades on, the song’s themes about lost innocence resonate more strongly for those of us who grew up listening to the song. When I hear the song, I think not only about the lost innocence of Little Jackie Paper.  I also think about my own childhood listening to the unusual dark children’s song.  In the song, I sensed some frightening message about the world ahead where little boys do not live forever and dragons are left alone to disappear.

    But in addition to the haunting elements, there was something comforting in the way the three voices blended together, revealing something else in the world.  Perhaps there was a touch of the nearly half-century friendship between the three singers that continued until Mary Travers’s death in 2009.

    And maybe some things do last forever. I do not know where I will be in another half century, but I do know that children still will be singing the college student’s poem about a dragon who frolicked in the autumn mist in a land called Honalee.

    And that is The Story Behind the Song.

    Update: Dick Kniss, who played bass for Peter Paul & Mary for almost five decades, passed away in 2012 at the age of 74. He also co-wrote John Denver’s hit, “Sunshine on My Shoulders.” RIP.

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