John Denver ( December 31, 1943 – October 12, 1997), born Henry John Deutschendorf, Jr., was an American singer-songwriter and musician who was one of the biggest selling artists of the 1970s.
Denver's songs were suffused with a deep and abiding kinship with the natural world. Songs such as " Take Me Home, Country Roads", " Leaving, On A Jet Plane", and " Rocky Mountain High" are popular all over the world. His songs are characterised by sweet melodies, elegant guitar-strumming, and his soulful rendition of the lyrics.
Denver was born in Roswell, New Mexico. His father, Henry Deutschendorf, Sr., was an Air Force officer and flight instructor, and they moved around the American southwest a lot while Denver was growing up.
As a teenager, he received a 1910 Gibson acoustic guitar from his grandmother, and polished his skills enough to be able to perform at local clubs by the time he was in college. Adopting the surname "Denver" after his favorite city, Denver dropped out of Texas Tech University in 1964, and moved to Los Angeles, California to join the Chad Mitchell Trio, a folk group. He left the group, by then known as Denver, Boise and Johnson, in 1969 to pursue a solo career, and released his first LP, Rhymes and Reasons.
It wasn't a hit, but it contained, "Leaving on a Jet Plane," which became a number one hit for Peter, Paul and Mary two years later. He recorded two more albums in 1970: Whose Garden Was This and Take Me to Tomorrow.
Denver's next album, Poems, Prayers and Promises, released the following year, finally broke him through in America, thanks in part to the single, "Take Me Home, Country Roads," which went to number two. His career flourished from then on, and the hits came pouring in for the next four years. In 1972, Denver scored his first top ten album, with Rocky Mountain High, while its title track reached the Top Ten in 1973. In 1974, "Sunshine On My Shoulders," and " Annie's Song" both went to number one, and "Back Home Again" made it to number five. In 1975, again he had two number ones ("Thank God I'm A Country Boy" and "I'm Sorry(/Calypso)"), a Top Twenty hit ("Sweet Surrender"), and another number two hit ("Calypso(/I'm Sorry)").
