Acclaimed composer Lee Holdridge, who has been nominated for 18 Emmy Awards, with seven wins, and who has also worked with Neil Diamond, Barbra Streisand, Natalie Cole and Whitney Houston, collaborated with Denver in 1974 on his album “Back Home Again.” He recalls telling the singer that his music would become part of American culture. “I said to [John], “You have songs that will become part of Americana. They’ll just be part of folk literature. People [will] just think they were around forever,” Holdridge said. “And that’s exactly what’s happened to certain songs. It’s part of the fabric — you hear ‘Country Roads’ all over the place and ‘Rocky Mountain High’ — you hear many of those songs everywhere. He was amazed that I told him that, but I said, you watch, it’s going to happen.”
John Denver’s Greatest Hits
Holdridge notes that people of all ages from around the world are listening to Denver’s music. “There are a lot of kids that know the songs. They don’t know what that is, but they love the song … and they can sing them,” Holdridge said. “It fascinates me that it’s timeless — I think that’s the best part of it all.” Holdridge feels that music has “gotten away from the art of songwriting.” “I worked with many great artists in the ’70s and ’80s and ’90s who were driven to have a great song.
They could be great artists, but they had these great songs,” he said. “And now it’s more about production and it’s very hard to find a great song. You know, some of the songs are fun, they’re catchy, or very gimmicky and everything but you don’t exactly walk away saying, ‘that’s a great song.’ You just sort of say, ‘Yeah, okay, that’s a nice record. I like that record,’ but you don’t think about it,” Holdridge stated. Milton Okun, a legendary record producer and classically-trained arranger as well as a 16-time Grammy Award nominee, helped turn John Denver into a pop star.
His love of opera was apparent when he brought Denver’s down-home singing together with the soaring voice of Placido Domingo. The duet recorded “Perhaps Love,” which was the title song on Domingo’s best-selling album. This opened the door for other crossover successes, including collaborations with the Three Tenors, Josh Groban and Andrea Bocelli. “In a strange way, matching that great operatic voice with the beautiful crystalline folk singer gave birth to that whole era,” Holdridge stated.
After Denver’s death, it was Okun’s idea to bring together Domingo and other opera singers to create a tribute to Denver. “Great Voices Sing John Denver” is an award-winning documentary about the making of a new CD of Denver songs reimagined by 15 singers from a completely different genre — opera.
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