John Denver: Definitive All-Time Greatest Hits.

John Denver: Definitive All-Time Greatest Hits. RCA/BMG 82876-60764-2 (2-disc set).

It's true that a little of John Denver goes a long way, which may explain the decline in his popularity during the eighties after a decade of superstardom in seventies. But some of the late singer's tunes remain personal favorites, and it's good to own this newly remastered, two-disc set from RCA that includes twenty of his biggest hits, plus four more bonus, unreleased songs.

Understandably, it was hard to pin down just what kind of songs Denver sang. Were they folk, pop, rock, or country? A little of all four, perhaps, although I always thought of him of a country-folk singer. Makes sense, too, because he rose to national attention as the replacement for Chad Mitchell in the celebrated folksinging trio of the sixties, and when the folk boom of that era closed, Denver moved effortlessly into the then-expanding country-western scene. His songs, like "Leaving on a Jet Plane," "Take Me Home, Country Roads," "Rocky Mountain High," "Sunshine on My Shoulders," "Back Home Again," "Annie's Song," and "Calypso" bridged the gap between folk and country with a combination of both genres.

All of the songs on the album but one, "Thank God I'm a Country Boy," were written or co-written by Denver. While they're very personal, they express a universal love of America's land and people, making Denver a uniquely "American" poet-songwriter. No protest here, though; just pleas for love and family and justice and more fresh, open spaces.

The sound varies slightly from song to song, as they are presented in a roughly chronological order from 1969 to 1983. I thought the earlier songs were the clearest, most transparent, possibly because as the years rolled on the productions became lusher, thicker, and warmer. Disc two includes two songs in purely acoustic mixes, "Annie's Song" and "Calypso," and they sound to my ears far better than the commercially released versions found on disc one.

There are only two drawbacks I found in the set. The first is that disc two contains only four items, which seems rather stingy for an entire disc; they are the two acoustic mixes mentioned above, Robbie Robertson's "The Weight," and an early version of "Leaving on a Jet Plane" that was recorded three years before the more-familiar version found on disc one. The second drawback is that this earlier "Jet Plane," though announced as "restored," sounds pretty awful--vague, tubby, overly resonant. Oh, well, these are minor quibbles in an otherwise splendid collection.