Saturday Rewind-Remembering Pete

During his lifetime, Pete Huttlinger became widely known as one of the most awe-inspiring acoustic guitar players in the world. His unique arrangements and spell-binding musicality and precision entertained audiences from Nashville to Los Angeles to Milan. He toured with such major acts as LeAnn Rimes and John Oates of Hall & Oates and became John Denver's lead guitar player in 1994. 

Born with a rare heart defect, Pete underwent a series of operations, beginning as a teenager, that ultimately failed to normalize the heart’s functions. In 2010, he suffered a stroke that his doctors initially thought would permanently immobilize him. But with characteristic determination, he returned to playing guitar within three weeks. His first performance was for his incredulous doctors.

Soon after, he suffered a heart failure so catastrophic that it kept him at the Texas Heart Institute in Houston for four months in 2011. Again, he worked his way back, first to proficiency and then to mastery of his instrument. He and his wife and manager, Erin Morris, chronicled his ordeal and recovery in their 2015 memoir, Joined at the Heart: A Story of Love, Guitars, Resilience and Marigolds.

Pete Huttlinger passed away ten years ago, on January 15th, 2026, at the age of 54.

My conversation with Pete and Erin, just about a month before he passed, in December of 2015, once again proves that your cause of death isn't nearly as important as your cause in life and Pete's mantra of "Don't just live, live well"...lives on.