John Denver picked the song up immediately and included it on his 1973 album Farewell Andromeda, which sold well, reaching #16 on Billboard's comprehensive charts, decidedly less that the #4 Rocky Mountain High LP that preceded it and Denver's two #1 Billboard albums that followed it, 1974's Back Home Again and 1975's Windsong.

Denver generally picked songs to cover that were well within his wheelhouse, but IMO he misstepped slightly with this one. Prine's original with that inimitable gravelly voice of his was perfect for the tune, and Bonnie Raitt was as fine a pop-blues singer as ever waxed a record and she knocked this one out of the park.

But Denver's voice was just a bit too sweet for "Angels"; the lyrics are dark to the point of desperation, and desperation is just not what John Denver did. Soaring optimism, love of nature, romantic idealization - that was JD's stock in trade, and no one else ever did those things quite the way or quite as well as he did. But the only attempt at anything bluesy that he tried subsequently were songs that he himself wrote - and "bluesy" or maybe better "blues-inflected" just aren't the same as blues.

So Ken gave us Prine's original; here's Raitt's excellent cover:

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And here's JD doing his best with it:

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