RAVENSWOOD, W.Va. – The year was 1971, and WMOV disc jockey David Hoyt had a brewing phenomenon on his hands.
As a 15-year-old DJ at the radio station in Ravenswood, Hoyt set into motion a pop culture tidal wave that not only overtook West Virginia but also the rest of the country and, eventually, the world.
That year, he became the first radio personality to play John Denver’s “Take Me Home, Country Roads” over the air.
The song, which appeared on Denver’s album, “Poems, Prayers, and Promises,” that same year, was first released in Europe. Through pure happenstance, and a little bit of help from the United States military, a copy ended up at his front door.
“A listener’s son had been stationed overseas. She saw him perform the song, or rather he did, and bought the album. He brought it home with him, so he and his mom brought it to the station for me to hear,” he said last week on MetroNews Talkline.
Despite his youth, Hoyt had already developed a keen ear for music and said it took just one chorus of “Country Roads” to convince him to put it on the air. With a copy of his own in hand, WMOV became the first station in the United States to play the song.
“I may have only been like 15 at the time, but I knew what a hit song sounded like. We started playing it on WMOV, and the response was just amazing,” he said.
As Denver’s tune snared the attention of listeners across the Mid-Ohio Valley, Hoyt began producing copies of the song and distributing them to other disc jockeys in places like Charleston, Wheeling, and Spencer. The explosion in popularity was enough for fans to start calling RCA, Denver’s record label, and ask for it to be released as a single.
The fact that “Take Me Home, Country Roads” was getting radio play at all was news to RCA, leading Hoyt to receive a phone call from Denver’s manager, Jerry Weintraub. Hoyt explained to the incredulous Weintraub how he got his hands on the record and, perhaps while trying to avoid legal action from the record company, made an appeal on behalf of all West Virginians.
“You could get in a little bit of trouble for doing that in those days, but hoping he was feeling charitable, I told him the song was lightning in a bottle and told him he needed to call RCA and tell them to release it here because I thought the song would sell a million copies just in West Virginia,” he said.
Hoyt’s bargaining succeeded, and “Take Me Home, Country Roads” became the only single released from “Poems, Prayers, and Promises” on April 12, 1971. The song landed on that week’s Billboard Hot 100 chart, but soon, popularity began to lag.
With RCA ready to move on, Denver convinced the label to stand by “Country Roads,” and as any West Virginian knows, that perseverance paid off.
“It dropped off the charts after a few months, and they wanted to go ahead and release something else, and I guess John Denver convinced RCA to stay with the song, so it eventually came back on the charts and climbed to the top ten, and, of course, ever since then, it’s just grown in leaps and bounds in popularity,” Hoyt said.
The song peaked at #2 on the chart in August 1971 and spent 23 weeks on the Hot 100 before landing at #8 on the year-end list. The following year, the Pride of West Virginia incorporated “Country Roads” into their pregame routine at West Virginia University football games, permanently linking the tune to a profound sense of Mountaineer pride.
In 1980, with WVU opening the brand-new Mountaineer Field (now called Milan Puskar Stadium), John Denver himself took center stage before kickoff to perform the anthem that touched the hearts of so many. Hoyt was supposed to be there to meet the man he’d helped turn into a Mountain State icon, but, as any true West Virginia native has experienced, the highway system had other ideas.
“I was supposed to get to meet him, but I got stuck in traffic somewhere around Shinnston, I think, and I walked into the field just as his helicopter took off,” he said.
With his chance missed, Hoyt settled for a photo autographed by the singer-songwriter. Inscribed on it was a simple message: “Thanks for breaking ‘Country Roads.'”
Surely at 15 years old, Hoyt could not have known what kind of chain reaction he set off by playing that song for the first time. From Milan Puskar Stadium and Hope Coliseum in Morgantown to NFL games in Berlin and karaoke bars in Tokyo, “Take Me Home, Country Roads” is the definition of a worldwide hit.
Despite the song’s love across the globe, there’s something about it that means a little bit more to someone from these 55 counties tucked inside the Appalachians.
“It has such an appeal. I know my brother lives in Staunton, VA, and he’s a confirmed West Virginia dude, and every time he hears the song, he said it just kind of stirs something there,” Hoyt said.
“It has a meaning for people from West Virginia, but it goes beyond that.”