Denver had included the song on his first album, Rhymes & Reasons, but it never charted - though he continued to offer stirring live renditions throughout his career. In 1969, the folk trio’s version became a number-one hit. His producer suggested that he change the title to “Leaving on a Jet Plane,” and then passed a demo to Peter, Paul and Mary. He recorded demos but didn’t release the song, and instead gave it to friends and family members as a gift. In 1966, Denver had written a song that he titled “Babe I Hate to Go,” which was a plaintive farewell to a loved one. But that’s when Denver’s songwriting - rather than his performances - brought his first taste of real fame. That summer, the summer of Woodstock, Denver’s manager got him a solo recording contract with RCA Records, and he promptly released his first two albums, which didn’t exactly light the charts on fire. But the group dissolved not long after, and Denver went out on his own as a solo singer-songwriter. In 1969, the Chad Mitchell Trio changed its name to Denver, Boise and Johnson because no original member was left. In his autobiography, he credits being in the trio as the catalyst for his political conscience. Denver joined the protests and participated in an anti-war demonstration in Washington, D.C. While touring with the group, Denver was introduced to activism by another act on the same college and folk-club circuit, comedian Dick Gregory, who was becoming vocally anti-war and criticizing U.S. He was chosen to replace Chad Mitchell in an established folk group, the Chad Mitchell Trio, in 1965. He swapped Deutschendorf for Denver, the capital of his favorite state to visit, at age twenty. He headed west to Los Angeles, where he was told that his name wasn’t star material. Like his generational peers - members of Peter, Paul and Mary, Simon and Garfunkel, and the New Christy Minstrels - Deutschendorf wrote songs and played them on the guitar, singing along in his clear, emotive voice. The folk scene was exploding, sparked by Woody Guthrie, Harry Belafonte, Pete Seeger and the Weavers, and others. He learned to play guitar on an instrument handed down to him by his grandmother in Oklahoma, and was studying architecture in Texas when he decided he’d rather be a musician. He was the son of an Army Air Force pilot based there at the time, and from there had a nomadic upbringing as a military brat. was born in 1943 in Roswell, New Mexico (the focus of so many captured alien myths.or are they?). RCA Records As he says in the song’s first line, John Denver was “born in the summer of 27th year” - but Henry John Deutschendorf Jr. But the meteor shower inspired him, and as “Rocky Mountain High” came together over the next couple of weeks, Denver’s guitar-playing friend Mike Taylor came up with the acoustic guitar-picking that opens the track.ĭenver made it the album’s title song and created a soundtrack for a state. In his autobiography, Take Me Home, Denver wrote that when he was camping and caught the annual Perseid meteor shower, he was almost done recording his next album, which was going to be called Mother Nature’s Son, after the Beatles song he covered on the record. Throughout the fall and into 1973, “Rocky Mountain High” was ubiquitous on Colorado and national airwaves, though it wasn’t as big a hit as the previous year’s “Take Me Home, Country Roads,” which climbed to number two on the pop charts and in 2014 was made the official state song of West Virginia.
(Good thing, too, since you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone who can even hum any of the first official state song, a 1911 piece of schmaltz called “ Where the Columbines Grow.”) Lawmakers passed the resolution even though there was some snickering about the word “high” being a drug reference, as suggested by one of the last lines, “Friends around the campfire and everybody’s high.Rocky Mountain high (high in Colorado).” Republicans consoled themselves with the explanation that the word reflected the state’s quality of life, not a state of intoxication. The song became so pervasive that the Colorado Legislature finally voted to make it the second official state song in 2007.
Most people can sing the chorus of “Rocky Mountain High,” John Denver’s folk-rock Top 40 standard released fifty years ago, in October 1972: “The Colorado Rocky Mountain high / I’ve seen it rainin’ fire in the sky.
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