It was released as a single performed by Denver on April 12, , peaking at number two on Billboard ' s US Hot singles for the week ending August 28, It has continued to sell, with over 1. The song is considered a symbol of West Virginia. In March , it became one of the four official state anthems of West Virginia. In , the song was selected by the Library of Congress for inclusion in the National Recording Registry.
Inspiration for the title line had come while Taffy Nivert and Bill Danoff, who were married, were driving along Clopper Road in Montgomery County, Maryland , to a gathering of Nivert's family in Gaithersburg , with Nivert behind the wheel while Danoff played his guitar.
To Danoff, the lyric "[t]he radio reminds me of my home far away" in the bridge is quintessentially West Virginian, an allusion to when he listened to the program Saturday Night Jamboree , broadcast from Wheeling, West Virginia , on WWVA at his home in Springfield, Massachusetts, during his childhood in the s. Danoff was influenced by friend and West Virginian actor Chris Sarandon and members of a West Virginia commune who attended Danoff's performances.
After the club's post-Christmas reopening night on Tuesday, December 29 Cellar Door engagements ran from Tuesday to Sunday, and this booking was for two weeks , the three returned to the couple's apartment for an impromptu jam. On the way, Denver's left thumb was broken in a collision.
He was rushed to the emergency room, where the thumb was splinted. When they returned to the apartment, Denver said he was "wired, you know. When Danoff and Nivert ran through what they had of the song they had been working on for about a month, planning to sell to Johnny Cash , Denver decided he had to have it, which prompted them to abandon plans for the sale.
