Songfacts®:

• "Grandma's Feather Bed" was written by a banjo player named Jim Connor, who was good friends with John Denver. The song is about his grandmother, Florence Setzer, who lived in Birmingham, Alabama and did indeed have a big feather bed that was the site of rumpus her grandchildren. Florence was known to sing at jamborees and other events, sometimes accompanied by Conner.
• Denver's version of this song is a cover; it was first released by Jim Connor's band the New Kingston Trio in 1973. Conner had been performing the song for years before it was recorded, and he first played it for Denver in 1968 before they did some skiing together. Using a mini-cassette player, he recorded Connor playing the song and learned it. He waited until 1974 to release it, though, including it on his album Back Home Again. He didn't issue the song as a single but it became a fan favorite and a must-play in concert. Denver performed it on many of his TV specials in the '70s.
• Denver related the song to his grandparents on his father's side, who had 11 kids, 10 of them boys. Denver explained: "I remember the old family farm in Oklahoma, a bed full of kids and so many quilts on top of us that we couldn't move. I remember all of the family around the kitchen table and rooms filled with laughter and climbing through the rafters in the attic. I remember how excited I would get the closer I got to the farm, and how much I loved being there and how much I hated to leave when we would have to go. All of that and more is captured in this song. I was going to write this song. Jim just beat me to it. Thanks, Jim! I couldn't have written it any better."
• "Grandma's Feather Bed" is a close cousin to "Thank God I'm A Country Boy," another fun stomper that appears on Denver's Back Home Again album. Denver wrote the lion's share of his songs, but these two were written by others - "Country Boy" was written by John Martin Sommers, a member of his band.
  
  And while "Grandma's Feather Bed" wasn't released as a single and therefore never charted, "Country Boy" was released as a live version taken from the 1975 TV special An Evening With John Denver, and went to #1.
• Jim Connor, who wrote the song, played banjo and harmonica on the track and sang backup. Connor toured with Denver in 1975.
• The line, "I even kissed Aunt Lou" refers to Jim Connor's aunt Louise. At one of Denver's shows in 1975 he brought her on stage when he performed the song.
• The song is driven musically by John Denver's acoustic guitar and Jim Connor's banjo. The drums and percussion were played by Hal Blaine, one of the most prolific session players in Los Angeles, where the Back Home Again album was recorded. He's the guy who supplied those big beats on "Be My Baby" by The Ronettes.
• When John Denver appeared on The Muppet Show in 1979, of course he played "Grandma's Feather Bed." And of course he was joined by about 20 Muppets on the bed.
  
  In 1983, Denver again performed the song with The Muppets on the TV special Rocky Mountain Holiday. That time, Kermit The Frog sang lead.
• In 2007, "Grandma's Feather Bed" was adapted into a children's book, illustrated and adapted by Christopher Canyon. Denver's songs "Sunshine On My Shoulders" and "Take Me Home Country Roads" were also turned into children's books by Canyon.