Caprock Chronicles: John 'Dutch' Denver at Texas Tech

Editor's Note: Jack Becker is the editor of Caprock Chronicles and recently retired as a librarian at Texas Tech University. He can be reached at jack.becker@ttu.edu. Today’s article is about John Denver, who died 25 years ago this month. It is by frequent contributor Chuck Lanehart, Lubbock attorney and award-winning Western history writer.

In his 1994 autobiography, John Denver wrote only a handful of paragraphs about his education at Texas Tech, but he remembered Tech as a “great environment for an artist.” College friends fondly remember the budding, bespectacled troubadour who spent just a couple of years in Lubbock in the early 1960s.

Henry John Deutschendorf Jr. was born in Roswell, New Mexico, in 1943. An “Air Force brat,” he and his family moved to various military destinations during his early years. His grandmother gave him his first guitar, and by the time he was a teenager he had mastered the instrument.

After graduation from Arlington Heights High School, John remembered, “College was a shaky proposition . . . All I knew about college was that you went there after high school.”

In the fall of 1961, John’s father drove him to Lubbock and advised the youngster, “You know, you’ve got a talent. You can play guitar and you can sing. Not everybody can do that. But that does not make you any better than anybody else . . . remember that.”

He enrolled in Texas Technological College as an architecture major. After he moved into his dormitory, Gaston Hall, most folks knew him by the nickname “Dutch.”

One of Dutch’s friends was Kent Hance, who 41 years later served as Chancellor of the Texas Tech University System. Dutch pledged Delta Tau Delta, and Kent was the fraternity president.

The fraternity had grade requirements, and Dutch’s marks were always below par. Kent said, “He was more interested in music and impressing young ladies on campus. I told that boy to throw that guitar away.” But the Delts eventually made him an honorary member, and Dutch played music and sang at fraternity functions, eventually earning a following on campus and around Lubbock.

“What made me happy — and what kept me at school — was the music I was making, and sometimes getting paid for,” he said. “I sang with a group called the Alpine Trio, and sometimes I sang by myself. Even in the dorm, I was the troubadour. You could always find me in my room at the head of the stairs. My dorm-mates liked to share their stories of conquest and plunder, and I liked to listen while playing the guitar.”

Fellow student George Chaffee and Dutch joined The Alpine Trio about the same time, and George said his skills were impressive. “The first time I met him . . . I knew this really fancy and fairly difficult finger-picking introduction that Peter, Paul and Mary had used on a song,” George remembered. “So I started playing that as we were getting tuned up. And John just started playing it right along with me, just grinning like crazy.

“Musically he had the skills, and then confidence-wise, you know, he wasn’t really cocky,” George said. “He just knew that he was an excellent singer, performer. He knew that he could entertain well.”

Dow Patterson, also an architecture major, performed with Dutch. He remembered Dutch sitting on a yellow Coca-Cola crate in a dormitory shower, grinning, singing, and playing guitar. He told Dow he liked the acoustics in the community restroom. “I never would have guessed that smiling kid would become a folk music legend,” Dow said.

Dutch became inconsolable after the Kennedy assassination in November of 1963, and soon after he returned to Tech after the semester break, he decided to head to California. “Everybody I knew, from my professors to my friends, told me I was making the biggest mistake of my life.”

George Chaffee remembered, “We were at the student union building the last time I saw him. He had a white . . . 1956 Chevrolet, and it was packed to the gills with his instruments . . . everything he had. I remember walking him out to the car . . . saying goodbye and we all shook his hand, slapped him on the back and watched him drive away. And I thought, ‘That poor guy.’"

Soon after arriving in Los Angeles, the 20-year-old Texas Tech dropout became John Denver, singer-songwriter. He joined the Chad Mitchell Trio in 1965.

By 1969, John was a solo performer, released an album on RCA, and one of his songs was covered by folk superstars Peter, Paul & Mary: “Leaving on a Jet Plane” became a No. 1 hit. John recorded his first hit, “Take Me Home, Country Roads,” in 1971, followed by a string of other hits. He became one of the most popular performers of the 1970s.

His career flourished: acting (“Oh, God”), successful TV variety shows, guest-host of The Tonight Show, Country Music Association Entertainer of the Year. In 1996, he was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame. John Denver — “Dutch” to his Tech friends — died when his experimental plane crashed in 1997. He was 53.

This article originally appeared on Lubbock Avalanche-Journal: In his 1994 autobiography, John Denver wrote only a handful of paragraphs about his education at Texas Tech, but he remembered Tech as a “gr