On June 3, 1975, John Denver was sitting at No. 1 on the Hot Country Songs chart with “Thank God I’m a Country Boy,” a song that would keep climbing and top the Hot 100 a week later for one week. The milestone put Denver back at the center of country radio, even though the track that carried him there was not one he wrote.

That is why the song still gets searched today: it is tied to a specific June 3 anniversary, and it answers a question that still catches listeners off guard. Denver was remembered as a prolific songwriter, with titles like “Sunshine on My Shoulders” among the songs most closely linked to him, but “Thank God I’m a Country Boy” came from John Martin Sommers, not Denver.

Sommers had been born and raised in Los Angeles, then moved to Aspen, Colorado, as an adult after serving as a pilot in the United States Navy. He was playing guitar in the Aspen bar band Liberty when he met Denver, and the two men bonded over their shared love of aviation and good music. Denver liked the band enough to ask Liberty if he could cut their song “River of Love,” then flew them to New York in 1973 to record it for Farewell Andromeda.

The path for “Thank God I’m a Country Boy” was different. Denver first recorded it for his 1974 album Back Home Again, but the album version did not become a hit. The live version from An Evening With John Denver was the one that broke through, turning the song into Denver’s second country chart-topper. Sommers wrote it while driving from Aspen to Los Angeles, though it is also possible he finished it on the way to the RCA studio in Hollywood, where Denver recorded Back Home Again.

That difference matters because it shows how a song can take on a life of its own after the studio cut fails to catch fire. Denver later added Sommers to his band as a guitarist and fiddle player, a practical sign of how closely the two musicians’ careers had become linked. The hit belonged to Denver on the charts, but the writing credit stayed with Sommers, and the live performance gave the song the momentum the album version never found.

June 3 marks the moment the record was already at the top of country music, with the pop crossover still waiting just ahead. A week later, it had become a No. 1 hit on the Hot 100 too, and that second peak is what made “Thank God I’m a Country Boy” part of the broader John Denver story rather than just another country success.