He Left On Jet Plane To Success

The blond-haired musician was still fairly new to the band, Mike Kobluk remembers, when he took out a guitar one night and began strumming one of his original songs.

“I’m leaving on a jet plane,” came the words in a tenor voice as pure and clear as an angel. “I don’t know when I’ll be back again. Oh, babe, I hate to go …”

John Denver’s “Leaving on a Jet Plane,” would become a pop standard known instantly the world over.

But 30 years ago, when he sang it the first time for his Mitchell Trio bandmates, it was just one of a number of raw tunes in Denver’s evolving repertoire.

Kobluk, Spokane’s director of entertainment facilities, spoke of his longtime friendship with Denver shortly after Monday news reports confirmed the famous singer had died in the crash of his small plane.

“We’re going to miss him a lot,” says Kobluk, who agrees that many of Denver’s memorable melodies will endure.

The lives of these two men were intertwined for nearly four turbulent years beginning in the mid-1960s before Denver hit the big time.

It all happened when Chad Mitchell decided to go solo. He abandoned the folksy Chad Mitchell Trio he had founded in 1962 with fellow Gonzaga University glee club members Kobluk and Joe Frazier.

The group, which enjoyed three Top 40 albums, suddenly needed a replacement. Fast. A national search was on. More than 250 musicians were auditioned.

One of them was John Deutschendorf. He was already in the process of changing his hard-to-pronounce name to one that would honor his favorite city.

Randy Sparks of the New Christy Minstrels discovered Denver playing in California folk clubs. He recommended him to Kobluk and Frazier, who were impressed from the first rehearsal.

“We thought this is an extremely exuberant person with an awful lot of talent,” Kobluk says. “He played the guitar like nothing we had ever seen.”

Even then, however, Denver had a Manhattan-sized ego that with success would swell to global proportions.

Kobluk recalls one rehearsal when Denver suddenly stunned Trio members by announcing he would “one day be bigger” than Frank Sinatra.

“I think we said something like, ‘All right, John. Sure. Now let’s get back to this song we’re doing,”’ Kobluk says. “We reminded him of it later and he regretted saying it. But he really believed that much in his ability.”

Denver got an additional bonus by being in the Trio. He met the woman who inspired “Annie’s Song,” one of his biggest hits.

Performing with the Trio at a small college in Minnesota, Denver met Anne Martell and fell instantly in love.

“You fill up my senses, like a walk in the forest …” became a sentimental wedding favorite. Denver shocked his fans in 1984 when he divorced his beloved Annie.

“She was very, very good for John,” Kobluk says. “They simply grew apart.”

It’s a point of history that the Mitchell Trio (Chad was dropped from the title after he left) was first to record Denver’s “Leaving on a Jet Plane.”

It’s also a matter of history that being first isn’t always the high road to success. The Trio, after all, was also first to record Bob Dylan’s “Blowin’ in the Wind.” Go figure.

It wasn’t until Peter, Paul and Mary recorded the song in 1969 that “Jet Plane” soared to No. 1.

Rumors have been told over the years that Denver, like Mitchell, caused hard feelings by leaving the Trio to seek his own fame. It didn’t happen. First Frazier quit. And Kobluk says he left before Denver did, which caused a major problem.

According to Kobluk, a clause in the contract stated that ownership of the group name would revert back to Chad Mitchell with the departure of the last original member.

Denver suddenly found himself in a nameless group with newcomers Michael Johnson and David Boise. As a further aggravation, he had to cover bills he felt were accrued by the Trio.

The final line-up released a couple of singles under the name Denver, Boise and Johnson before folding for good.

It didn’t matter. Other Denver songs were beginning to hit the charts. In 1968 he signed a solo contract with RCA records.

All that fame he dreamed of was just a few albums away.

“Audiences saw him as friendly in a unique sort of way,” says Kobluk, who says he talked to Denver on the telephone a couple of weeks ago.

Former Trio members are planning a reunion in Spokane followed by some relaxation time at a lake. Denver, who played Spokane several times in the past decade, said he wanted to come, but declined, citing an engagement in Alaska.

“It was great to have been a part of all of it,” Kobluk says. “Absolutely. No question. I was there when ‘Sunshine On My Shoulders’ was born.

“All of John’s songs were so introspective. He never wrote anything he didn’t feel or believe.”

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