Portrait
John Denver may have been a 1970s phenomenon, but oh what a phenomenon he was! Between the summer of 1971 when "Take Me Home, Country Roads" cracked the charts and January 1976 when "Fly Away" went to No. 1, the boy-next-door country-folk singer chalked up 10 top-10 hits. Even after the singles began to peak somewhere short of Rocky Mountain heights, Denver ably branched into film (he costarred in the box-office winnerOh God) and social activism (as much as any entertainer, he deserves credit for making environmentalism a mainstream movement). The man born John Henry Deutschendorf was almost as widely loathed as he was beloved, however: the number of people who were intoxicated by his wholesome, soaring songs were nearly matched by those who wretched at the mention of his name. This two-disc anthology is for the latter group, though it underserves an element of the late superstar's audience. Missing here are "Fly Away," "Calypso," "Rocky Mountain High," "Sweet Surrender," "Take Me Home, Country Roads," and "Thank God I'm a Country Boy." (One would be well advised to pick up volumesoneandtwoof his greatest hits to get all the radio staples.)Portraitpresents a smattering of smashes interspersed with lesser-known fare dating from 1971 to 1986 and topped off with four previously unreleased live recordings. ConsiderPortraitan incomplete picture.--Steven Stolder