Poems, Prayers & Promises

Artist: John Denver
Label: RCA
Category: Music

Average customer rating:

Media: Audio CD
Number Of Discs: 1

UPC: 078635518924
EAN: 0078635518924
ASIN: B000002W7R

Release Date: 1990-10-25

Poems, Prayers & Promises

Related Categories:

General

| Pop | Styles | Music

Singer-Songwriters

| Pop | Styles | Music

Soft Rock

| Pop | Styles | Music

Pop Rock

| Pop | Styles | Music

Folk Rock

| Rock | Styles | Music

General

| Rock | Styles | Music

CDs $7 - $10

All Bargain Titles

All Bargain Titles

Tracks:

Poems, Prayers And Promises
Let It Be
My Sweet Lady
Wooden Indian
Junk
Gospel Changes
Take Me Home, Country Roads
I Guess He'd Rather Be In Colorado
Sunshine On My Shoulders
Around And Around
Fire And Rain
The Box

Similar Items:

Rocky Mountain High
Back Home Again
Farewell Andromeda
Rhymes & Reasons
Windsong

Customer Reviews:

His best!.......2007-04-12

Delightful, insightful, a pure joy to listen to and sing along with. Pay close attention to the lyrics of the title song. It is prophetic and he didn't even realize it. "When the cities start to crumble, and the towers fall around us"

Poems, Prayers and Promises.......2007-04-11

Catching up on what I missed when he was alive, still beautiful music!

A Classic.......2006-04-13

My exposure to this album came "back in the day;" in my boyhood, somewhere around 1973, when a second-hand vinyl LP came into my possession. By this time John Denver had become quite popular, so some of the songs were already familiar. It was the lessr-knowns that grabbed my heartstrings then, and still hold onto them today.

The cover of James Taylor's "Fire and Rain" leaves the original standing in the shade. The stripped down arrangement and pregnant pauses invest the tune with a raw emotional power that the original's production job seemed to lack in comparison. The song has stayed with me and held me all of these years. As a musician myself, I revisit it from time to time, usually when I'm feeling down, for the second verse is a prayer. Certainly, there aer other highlights to this album, but this one's the high-water mark for me.

Denver's original songs, whether solo or accompanied by group arrangements, reflect a generational idealism in song, and may be seen as inspiraton for the outdoor lifestyle and conservation movements; "Guess He'd Rather Be in Colorado" would be my case-in-point. The pacifist movement was also represented on this album in a rather unusual fashion with the spoken-word, "The Box," a powerful anti-war poem that is all-too-applicable in today's times. The acoustic cover of the Beatles' "Let It Be" also stands out. While not eclipsing the original, it is nonetheless a testament to what John Denver was all about, and it fits perfectly with the rest of the material.

"My Sweet Lady" is one of the most tender love songs you'll ever hear. The title track deserved more than it got, in terms of being a hit. Its words perhaps sum up what John Denver really meant to a generation, depite becoming somewhat of an un-hip cliche to many in his later years:

talk of poems and prayers and promises
And things that we believe in
How sweet it is to love someone
How right it is to care
How long it's been since yesterday
What about tomorrow
What about our dreams
And all the memories we share

Thanks for what you've given us, John. The world needs more like you.

As for those who would consider this album for purchase, I can assert that it's likely the most definitive original album by this artist, and if you only buy one of his albums, this is THE one to get.

The Box.......2006-02-11

I dont know about any one else but I have been trying to find this for a very very long time. I had it once on tape and didnt realize it. I was listening to a john denver tape one day and THE BOX came on. oh my god its so moving. I lost it over the years while moving accross country. and now I have found it again. I thought maybe it was just someting he put on a recorded tape never to be heard again. I just wanted to share with you all this is the best thing on this entire alblum.

John Denver takes the Country Road to his big breakout album in 1971.......2005-08-22

I have been listening to the first John Denver hits collection for so long, the one where he went back into the studio and re-recorded some of his older songs, that listening to the original version of "Poems, Prayers & Promises" was rather strange. But it serves as a reminder of the simple start of his career before he became the most popular singer-songwriter in the country. In fact, the first concert I ever went to was a John Denver concert and to this day whenever I drive in the mountains I put on his music as my soundtrack while driving.

This 1971 album was John Denver's big breakthrough because of the single "Take Me Home, Country Roads" (co-written with Bill Danoff and Taffy Nivert), but it is clearly the other original Denver songs that give this album substance. I think the title track is one of Denver's two best original songs ("Rhymes And Reasons" is the other, mainly because I can never really think of "Leaving on a Jet Plane" as being a John Denver song rather than a Peter, Paul & Mary song), and he also wrote "My Sweet Lady," "Wooden Indian," "I Guess He'd Rather Be in Colorado," "Sunshine on My Shoulders," and "Around and Around." So it was interesting to me in retrospect that when "Take Me Home, Country Roads" climbed all the way to #2 on the Billboard singles chart, that what we think of now as the John Denver persona was fully established. He might have been a country singer, but he was singing of the high country of Colorado's mountains and that made him standout.

Music Album:

Music Album

Music Album

Music CD

Passarim ~ Antonio Carlos Jobim

That Old Feeling ~ Zoot Sims Quartet

Jazz Nocturne ~ Lee Konitz Quartet

Somebody Loves Me ~ Frank Strazzeri

Live in Paris at the Gibus ~ Sun Ra

Blue Note Years, Vol. 17 ~ Dexter Gordon

Siempre Yo (Serie Cristal Reissue) ~ Monchy Y Orquesta Capricho

The Journey

I Love MPB: Eu Amo Você ~ Tim Maia

Mooi Amsterdam ~ Various Artists