With all due respect to John Denver and his fans, it does seem somehow strangely fitting that he should die as a result of an accident which happened while he was flying in a home-made plane, trying to get as "close to nature" as was a defining feature of his songs. Initially yesterday, there were reports that the body in the plane crash near Colorado just might not have been Denver because the singer was well known for his tendency to try to escape, without radio or mobile phone, into the kind of Rocky Mountain High territory that gave his second album its title. Denver may have gotten much media stick for being a "natureboy", but in his case, from the beginning to, obviously, the end, this characteristic was true. Born Henry John Deutschendorf in Roswell, New Mexico, on December 31st, 1943, Denver was "discovered" in a Los Angeles night club and joined the Black Porch Majority, which was a nursery group for the New Christy Minstrels.
He later became part of the Chad Mitchell Trio but soon set out on a solo career as a songwriter when his composition Leaving on a Jet Plane was a hit for Peter, Paul and Mary in 1969. The same song was a focal point of his debut album Rhymes and Reasons, which was followed by albums such as Take Me To Tomorrow and Whose Garden Is This?
However, it was not until the release of Poems, Prayers and Promises, which contained the song Take Me Home, Country Roads, that John Denver began to be seen as another folk-country songwriter following in the footsteps of Bob Dylan.
Sadly, the aching quality at the soul of that composition, which was probably best captured in the version by Ray Charles, soon was replaced by crass sentimentality in compositions such as Annie's Song.
The latter became not just a hit for Denver, but the tune which took classical flautist James Galway to the top three in the British charts in 1978. Denver's status as an "all-round entertainer" was further enhanced in the late 1970s and early 1980s when he and Frank Sinatra appeared together in concert and on television specials. John Denver also forged a film career of his own, appearing in movies such as Oh God, with octogenarian George Burns. However, during the last decade of his life, despite occasional visits to countries such as Ireland, which still were receptive to his kind of folk-based homeliness, Denver increasingly devoted his time to charitable work and ecological interests.
In terms of recordings, RCA merely regurgitated his greatest hits in volumes 1-3. Of these hits it is standards such as Annie's Song, Thank God I'm A Country Boy and Sunshine on My Shoulders for which he will be best remembered. More interesting, by far, are albums such as The Flower that Shattered the Stone and Earth Songs, though it must be said that John Denver is unlikely to be regarded as one of the most important singer-songwriters of the 1970s.
But at his best, there was a purity to his music, and a sense of sincerity that many of his fans would probably say are missing from modern music. By those fans he will be deeply missed.