Sometime in the early 1990s, John Denver went into the studio and recorded a song he did not write. It was “The Blizzard,” a long, quiet story-song by Judy Collins. When he finished, he sent Judy Collins a demo of his version. Then the tape went into his archives, and it stayed there.

John Denver never released it. He died in 1997. It took his estate until 2016 to find the master recording, and until October 12, 2017, to share it with the world. That date was not chosen by accident. It was exactly twenty years after the day John Denver died.

A Song Written for the Colorado Mountains

Judy Collins was not born in Colorado, but she has always called it home. Her family moved from Seattle to Denver in 1949, when she was ten years old. Her father, Charles “Chuck” Collins, was a blind singer, pianist and radio host whose show was broadcast in Denver for years. He was the one who filled the house with music.

Judy Collins recorded “The Blizzard” in 1989, and it became the bookends of her 1990 album Fires of Eden. The album opens with the song and closes with a reprise of it. In the liner notes, she dedicated it to her father, Charles Thomas Collins, the man who taught her to love a good story.

And it is a story. Over more than seven minutes, a woman driving a mountain road gets caught in a snowstorm and pulls into a small diner to wait it out. There is the owner, there is a stranger at the counter, and there is a long night of talking while the snow comes down. Judy Collins later explained that the story is basically her own experience of being stuck in a Colorado blizzard, with a little poetic license. Anyone who has ever put chains on their tires on a mountain pass knows exactly the feeling.

The Man Who Took Colorado’s Name

John Denver was born Henry John Deutschendorf Jr. on December 31, 1943, in Roswell, New Mexico. Early in his career, Randy Sparks of the New Christy Minstrels suggested that “Deutschendorf” would never fit on a marquee. So the young singer chose a new last name, borrowed from the capital of the state whose mountains he loved most.

John Denver went on to live in Aspen for much of his life, and in 1974 he was named poet laureate of Colorado. Songs like “Rocky Mountain High” made the state part of his identity. It is easy to see why a Colorado story-song by a Denver-raised songwriter would speak to him.

The Demo That Went Quiet

John Denver recorded his version of “The Blizzard” in the early 1990s and sent the demo to Judy Collins. For reasons nobody has fully explained, he never released it on any of his albums.

On October 12, 1997, John Denver died when the experimental plane he was flying crashed into Monterey Bay, near Pacific Grove, California. He was 53 years old.

Found in the Archives

In 2016, people working for the John Denver Estate were going through his archives when they came across the master recording of “The Blizzard.” They mixed it, mastered it, and decided to release it as a tribute on the twentieth anniversary of his death. Brian Schwartz, the director of the estate, put it simply:

“It’s a very John Denver song.”

The single arrived on October 12, 2017, on streaming services and digital stores. It was part of a larger effort to remember John Denver that year, which also included The Windstar Greatest Hits, a collection of his classic songs that he had re-recorded in the 1990s.

Judy Collins Still Remembers Him

Judy Collins has never stopped singing about Colorado, and she has not forgotten John Denver either. At a concert in Buffalo, New York, in early 2023, she told the audience she had known him back when he was still John Deutschendorf, and that she had taken him out on the road as an opening act in the 1960s. Then she honored him with a medley of “Leaving on a Jet Plane” and “Take Me Home, Country Roads.” Later in the same show, she sang “The Blizzard.”

Judy Collins was inducted into the Colorado Music Hall of Fame in 2013. John Denver’s ashes were scattered in the Colorado Rocky Mountains. Two voices that loved the same mountains, joined by one song about getting caught in a storm on the way home.

Do you remember where you were the first time you heard a John Denver song about Colorado? Share your memory with us.