John Denver Annie's Song Live MUsic Video

John Denver (December 31, 1943 – October 12, 1997), born Henry John Deutschendorf, Jr., was an American country music/folk singer-songwriter and folk rock musician. He was one of the most popular acoustic artists of the 1970s in terms of record sales, recording and releasing around 300 songs, of which about 200 were composed by him. He was named Poet Laureate of Colorado in 1977. Songs such as "Leaving on a Jet Plane" (1967), "Take Me Home, Country Roads" (1971), "Rocky Mountain High" (1972), "Sunshine on My Shoulders" (1973), "Thank God I'm a Country Boy" (1974), "Annie's Song" (1974), and "Calypso" (1975) are popular worldwide. Denver has been referred to as "The Poet for the Planet", "Mother Nature's Son" (based on The Beatles song he covered) and "A Song's Best Friend".

Denver was born in Roswell, New Mexico, to Erma Louise Swope and Henry John Deutschendorf, Sr., an Air Force officer and flight instructor of German ancestry. In his autobiography Take Me Home, Denver described his life as the eldest son of a family shaped by a stern father who could never show his love for his children. Denver's mother's family was Scots-Irish and German Catholic, and it was they who imbued Denver with a love of music. His maternal grandmother gave him his first guitar when he was seven.

Since Denver's father was in the military, the family moved often, making it hard for young John to make friends and fit in with people his own age. Constantly being the new kid was agony for the introverted youngster, and he grew up always feeling as if he should be somewhere else but never knowing where that "right" place was. Denver was happier in Tucson, Arizona, than anywhere else; but his father was transferred to Montgomery, Alabama, in the midst of the Montgomery boycotts. John Denver saw Alabama as a place of hatred and mistrust, and he wanted no part of it. It was in Montgomery, however, that he discovered that music was a way to make friends. When he sang and played his guitar, others paid attention to him. Nonetheless, he continued to feel alienated and once refused to speak for several months when he was severely bruised by a broken romance. source: wikipedia