Songfacts®:

• John Denver wrote most of his own songs, but this joyful celebration of country life was written by John Martin Sommers, the guitarist/fiddler in his band. Sommers wasn't a country boy: He was born in Los Angeles and moved to Aspen, Colorado in the late '60s, which is where he met Denver, who moved to Aspen (also from Los Angeles) in the early '70s. (Sommers and Denver also shared a love of aviation; Sommers was a pilot in the Navy before he started in music.)
  
  Sommers wrote the tune during a peaceful drive from Aspen to Los Angeles. He had reason to be happy: In 1973 he was playing in an Aspen bar band called Liberty when Denver saw the group perform and asked if he could record their song "River Of Love," which Sommers wrote. Denver flew the band to New York to record the song and included it on his 1973 album Farewell Andromeda. Sommers joined his band and contributed "Country Boy" to his next album, Back Home Again. So within a matter of months, Sommers went from playing regular gigs with his bar band at the Blue Moose in Aspen, to touring the country with John Denver, one of the biggest stars of the time, and also contributing songs.
  
  Sommers spent about four years in Denver's band; other songs he wrote or co-wrote include "Love Is Everywhere" and "In the Grand Way." He kept a low profile but remained a musical mainstay in Aspen. He was part of various tributes to Denver, who died in 1997 when the plane he was piloting crashed.
• "Thank God I'm A Country Boy" is the ultimate endorsement of the simple life found in rural areas. The guy in the song needs just two things to be happy - a good fiddle and a good woman - and he has them both.
  
  At this point Denver was a big star with a private jet ("The Starship") and a sizable entourage, but he was also very down-to-earth, valuing friends, music and nature above luxurious indulgences. He didn't grow up on a farm but he could relate to the sentiment, and so could his listeners, no matter where they came from.
• The song first appeared on Denver's 1974 album Back Home Again, but it was a live version released a year later that was the hit. That live version was part of Denver's double album An Evening With John Denver, which he recored at the Universal Amphitheatre in Los Angeles for his ABC TV special, also called An Evening With John Denver. The song didn't make the TV special but was released as a single, cut down to 2:57 from the 3:40 album version. The song plays really well live because you can hear the crowd clapping along and hooting, giving it lots of energy and a hootenanny as Denver sings like he's trying to reach the back row.
  
  The song went to #1 in June 1975, giving Denver his third chart-topper, following his mellow tunes "Sunshine On My Shoulders" and "Annie's Song."
• Fittingly, the song was a #1 Country hit, Denver's second, following "Back Home Again." Denver had loads of pop appeal and lived in the Colorado resort town of Aspen, so many country music purists rejected him. When he won the CMA for Entertainer Of The Year on October 13, 1975, it was presented by the previous year's winner, Charlie Rich, who took out a lighter and burned the announcement card before declaring Denver the winner (John wasn't there and didn't know about the stunt - he accepted via satellite).
  
  "John's relationship with the country music world was a curious thing," his producer, Milt Okun, wrote in the liner notes to Denver's Definitive All-Time Greatest Hits. "He sold so many records, many of them to country fans, but he was never really entirely accepted by Nashville. But to me John really was the best of what country music can be."
• The song's writer, John Martin Sommers, played fiddle and sang backup on both the live and studio versions.
• In 1975 the Baltimore Orioles began a long-standing tradition of playing "Thank God I'm A Country Boy" during the seventh-inning stretch. The was the first year the team started playing pop music instead of old-timey organ tunes. It was the team's shortstop, Mark Belanger, who suggested it.
  
  The team tried to replace the song a few times over the years but faced immediate backlash and always put it back. The Orioles have a pretty good claim on the song, but you'll hear it in many minor-league parks as well and in other sports because it's such a singalong crowd pleaser.
  
  It's almost certainly the longest-running pop song played traditionally by a major league baseball team. The Yankees started playing "Y.M.C.A." in 1996 and the Red Sox introduced "Sweet Caroline" in 1997.
• The song is featured in the 1993 comedy Son in Law, starring Pauly Shore and Carla Gugino. It's used in a scene where Shore's character carves his name into a corn field with a harvester.
• In Stephen King's 1979 novel The Dead Zone, this is used as a campaign song for farm boy-turned-politician Greg Stillson.
• Popular covers of the song are by:
  
  Alabama native Jim Nabors (aka Gomer Pyle of The Andy Griffith Show), who performed it on The Muppet Show in 1976.
  
  Dolly Parton sang it on her mid-'70s variety show Dolly! as "Thank God I'm A Country Girl." She also performed a bluegrass rendition at some of her concerts.
  
  Billy Dean, who landed at #27 on the Country chart with his 2004 cover.
• The line, "I'd play 'Sally Goodin'' all day if I could" is a reference to a 1922 song called "Sally Goodin'" by Eck Robertson and Henry Gilliland that's considered the very first country music recording.