Taffy Nivert
American singer-songwriter
Mary Catherine "Taffy" Nivert (born October 25, 1944) is an American songwriter and singer. She is best known for co-writing "Take Me Home, Country Roads", which was popularized by John Denver, and for being a member of the Starland Vocal Band.
Biography
Mary Catherine Nivert was born 25 October 1944 in Washington, DC. She received her nickname Taffy from her elder brother who, unable to pronounce her middle name as a young child, would call her Mary Tafferine. Nivert began singing along with the radio in high school. She was discovered by a bartender in Georgetown after he heard her singing to a jukebox. The bartender asked if she wanted to join a vocal group, and through this, she met her future husband, Bill Danoff.
Nivert began performing with Danoff as Fat City in the late 1960s. Initially a folk duo, the two later married and recorded four albums, the latter two under the name Bill and Taffy.
In 1970, while traveling along Clopper Road to Nivert's family reunion in Germantown, Maryland, Danoff began writing a song that became "Take Me Home, Country Roads". The couple planned to complete the song and sell it to Johnny Cash.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Taffy Nivert” is american singer-songwriter. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Taffy, Nivert and American, not as a finished interpretation.
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The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 23, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q18387595. VIAF identifies the subject as 36690626. The Library of Congress control number is no2007033121. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1944 and 1970.
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This entry incorporates text from “Taffy Nivert” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.