The Chad Mitchell Trio, later known as The Mitchell Trio, were an American vocal group whose peak years were during the 1960s. They performed traditional folk songs and some of John Denver's early compositions.
The Chad Mitchell Trio at the University of Michigan, c. 1962
Formation and Early Years
The original group was formed in 1958 by William Chadbourne "Chad" Mitchell, Mike Kobluk, and Mike Pugh when they were students and glee club members at Gonzaga University in Spokane, Washington, United States. They were encouraged by Spokane Catholic priest Reinard W.
When three young men left Gonzaga University in 1959 to go sing folk music in New York City, they had no idea of the lives that would follow. The story of the Chad Mitchell Trio is being told by former Spokane Daily Chronicle and Spokesman-Review reporter Mike Murphey, who happened to do a story on the trio in January 1983.
The Chad Mitchell Trio were headliners at the second annual Fold Festival in Spokane on Aug. Murphey started work on his book three years ago, doing three interviews a week with Mitchell and Kobluk either together or apart. Frazier died several years ago. The group’s original members were Chad Mitchell, Mike Kobluk and Mike Pugh. After only a few months, Pugh left and was replaced by Joe Frazier.
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Chad, Mike Kobluk and Mike Pugh were members of the Glee Club at Gonzaga University in Spokane, Washington. Catholic priest, Father Beaver felt they had the potential for a career in music. He convinced them to join him in his station wagon for a cross-country adventure to seek out the fabled folk music scene of New York City's Greenwich Village. On the way to the City, Father Beaver was on the lookout for places where the trio could perform, sometimes for food and sometimes for money. By the time they reached New York, they had not only survived the trip, but had made enough money to live on for while.
Father Beaver was energized by the cross county success and continued to knock on doors for the group. He managed an audition with Bertha Case, a literary agent who also represented the singer Nina Simone. Miss Case was so enamored by their sound that she took them under her wing, loaned them money and knocked on more doors for them.
They were signed to Coplix Records and Milt Okun, an arranger and conductor with Harry Belafonte Enterprises, was hired to guide the Trio musically as their director and arranger. Father Beaver returned by himself to Spokane and Milt Okun became the new fatherly mentor of the group. By Thanksgiving, 1959, the Chad Mitchell Trio had their first booking on a major television show, The Pat Boone Show.
Milt also introduced them to Harry Belafonte who arranged for them to appear with him, Odetta and Miriam Makeba at Carnegie Hall on May 2, 1960.
The key people who helped the trio were musical arranger Milton Okun and star performer/singer Harry Belafonte. Okun provided a professional polish to their performing skills, which helped them gain both a key booking at New York City's Blue Angel club and radio appearances with Arthur Godfrey and television appearances with Pat Boone.
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After recording mostly conventional folk songs, the trio released a then-daring satire of the John Birch Society, which established their ability to perform more controversial material.
On albums and in the numerous concerts they performed, usually on college campuses, the Chad Mitchell Trio separated itself from such folk contemporaries as Peter, Paul & Mary and the Kingston Trio with its sense of humor.
The trio, founded in 1958 by singer Chad Mitchell at Gonzaga University in his Spokane, Wash., hometown, became a hit with college audiences on the strength of such satirical songs as The John Birch Society and Draft Dodger Rag.
What made us slightly different, said Mike Kobluk, the only member to last through the trios entire decade-long existence, was we did a lot of social and political commentary, especially in the form of satire. And the college kids were thriving on this kind of thing. Wars were going on that were not popular. So if we sang an anti-war song, satire or serious, those thoughts were widely accepted.
Away from the university setting, however and, as Kobluk remembers it, the Mitchell Trio played every college campus in America between 1958 and 1968 the trio was cast in another light. Radio stations shied away from anything hinting of controversy, so when the trio would make live radio appearances, theyd show up at the studio to find that half or more of the titles on their albums were blacked out, an indication that these songs were not to be aired. We were black-lined, rather than blacklisted, said Kobluk.
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And in the TV appearances that were crucial to a groups popularity at the time, the Mitchell Trio was even more constrained in what they could do.
That hurt us on record, because a lot of the songs were not played on radio. They were quote, unquote controversial. We did TV, but we werent allowed to do the kind of material that made us different, said Kobluk, a British Columbia native who had attended Gonzaga specifically for its massively popular Mens Chorus. So to one audience, the Mitchell Trio was on the cutting edge of social relevance; to another, it was a fine-sounding, squeaky clean folk ensemble toeing the corporate line.
But it was clear to Kobluk and Joe Frazier and Mitchell himself, who comprised the trio through most of its early existence which face was the truest. Folk music to us was being able to express ideas that we all held, in music. If that meant making a social commentary, then thats what we were interested in doing. Our group, more than any other, was interested in providing social commentary. And we did a lot of songs by writers who were looking for that kind of outlet.
Among those writers was Bob Dylan. The Mitchell Trio, after two live albums Mighty Day On Campus and At the Bitter End recorded the first version of the little-known folk singers Blowin in the Wind for their first studio album, in 1962. The trio pushed to have the song issued as a single but their record company, puzzled by the ambiguous poetry of the lyrics, refused. Some months later, Peter, Paul & Mary released their version of Dylans song, a seminal moment in the folk movement. And the Mitchell Trio was vindicated when the record company capitalized on the attention by changing the name of the entire album from The Chad Mitchell Trio in Action to Blowin in the Wind.
The Trio's first recordings for Colpix were similar to the conventional folk songs that were gaining popularity then as an alternative to the early rock-and-roll genre. Their next Kapp album contained "The John Birch Society". The trio's Mercury albums continued its trend to record topical and controversial songs.
Changes in Membership and John Denver's Arrival
Mitchell left the trio in 1965 to embark on a solo singing career. Another audition process replaced him with the young (and unknown) singer/songwriter John Denver.
In 1965, seven years after forming the trio out of the Gonzaga Mens Chorus, Mitchell parted ways with the group. The solo career that ensued was only a modest success.
But Kobluk and Frazier carried on under an agreement with Mitchell that the group would keep the Mitchell Trio name until the last original member Kobluk threw in the towel. From 1965 until the group was finally laid to rest in 1968, the Mitchell Trio without Mitchell was more popular than Mitchell himself.
The reason for much of the trios popularity was an unknown young singer who had been playing a small club in Phoenix. Mike Kirkland, a singer with the folk group the Brothers Four, had recommended that the Mitchell Trio consider John Denver as a replacement for their eponym.
As Kobluk recalls, he and Frazier auditioned a huge number of singers for the spot, but finally settled on Denver. Thank heavens, said Kobluk, as he and Clare, his wife of 40-something years, drove from their home in Spokane two blocks away from Mitchells to their lake house over the Canadian border.
Denver was a cog in what was already a smooth-running machine. Milt Okun, who would later become producer of much of Denvers solo material, had a strong say as musical director about just what the trios material would be, how the songs would be arranged. Kobluk takes some pride in how much of a unit the Mitchell Trio was at working out songs as a trio, rather than three separate parts that had to be coordinated.
The trio truly was a trio, said Kobluk. John Denver stood out in a lot of ways but he also was a member of the group. It didnt evolve into anything but a group effort.
One of the ways Denver stood out was in his ambition. When we asked him what is your goal in life, in music, he was unabashed, recalled Kobluk. He said he wanted to be bigger than Frank Sinatra. (At a Las Vegas engagement years later, Kobluk witnessed Denver fight Sinatra to a draw in terms of popularity. The two singers shared a bill, and alternated nights as the closing act.) He was young and vibrant and exuberant.
Ultimately, Denver did alter somewhat the course of the Mitchell Trio. The group had always performed as three singers, backed by a pair of instrumentalists. (One of those early string players was Jim McGuinn, who would change his name to Roger and achieve fame as leader of folk-rock pioneers the Byrds.) The only thing that changed was that John Denver was a fabulous guitar player, especially on the 12-string. So we featured John playing, said Kobluk.
Denver also polished his early song-writing skills in the trio, contributing Leavin on a Jet Plane, and For Bobbie which would be renamed For Baby and become a hit for Peter, Paul & Mary to the repertoire.
Frazier's departure from the trio in 1966 brought in replacement David Boise. Mike Kobluk, Joe Frazier and David Boise later left the music industry; Chad Mitchell released a number of solo albums before retiring from music; Denver's time with the trio became the springboard to his successful solo career. Michael Johnson recorded more than 15 albums as a solo artist; he died at his Minneapolis home on July 25, 2017.
By 1968, Kobluk was ready for another life. He returned to Gonzaga to finish his degree, then took a series of jobs in Spokane as alumni director for his alma mater, as supervisor of the entertainment for the Expo 74 Worlds Fair in Spokane and, for 29 years, as manager of Spokanes various performing arts facilities. The trio carried on as the short-lived Denver-Boise-Johnson Trio, with Michael Johnson, before Denver went off to his prominent solo career. Mitchell abandoned his singing career to work in real estate in Spokane.
Oddly, the two people most closely identified with the Chad Mitchell Trio, Mitchell and Denver, barely knew each other. As Mitchell recalls, he only met the late Aspenite twice, and never once saw him perform. Still, through recordings and TV appearances, Denver left a strong impression on Mitchell.
Obviously I followed Johns career. How could you miss it? said Mitchell by phone. Ive often thought, if I wanted to do something more successfully in the world of music, Id have wanted to emulate his career. Id want to do what he did with his celebrity. He did quite wonderful things with what he became. Purists would criticize him for not being a folk artist. But he touched people, influenced people with his social and political bent.
Those demons led to Mitchell being imprisoned in Mexico at one point. Frazier was kicked out of the group in 1966 when he began missing concerts because of drug issues, Murphey said.
The trio members didn’t have any contact with one another until 1985.
“Each of us was interested and anxious to get together,” Kobluk said. They could. That performance launched a reunion tour of sorts, with the group performing three or four times a year.
“Dragging up the past is sometimes difficult and sometimes great memories,” he said. “It’s an interesting book in a lot of ways.
Musical Style and Impact
"Twelve Days" imagined a group of former Nazis singing new lyrics to the old Christmas carol; a similar theme would be explored later in the "I Was Not A Nazi Polka". "Barry's Boys" ("You too can join the crew/Tippecanoe and Nixon, too"), a song from Julius Monk's "Dime a Dozen, which portrayed a view of the followers of conservative Republican 1964 Presidential candidate Barry Goldwater. "A Dying Business" went after funeral costs and customs, while "The Draft Dodger Rag" (by Phil Ochs: "Sarge, I'm only eighteen/I got a ruptured spleen/And I always carry a purse") explored the beginnings of resistance to the Vietnam War. "What Kind of Life Is That" pondered on celebrity fame (specifically, that of Elizabeth Taylor).
While the Mitchell Trio became best known for such songs, they also produced a solid body of work which showed that folk music could be "polished" yet remain close to its roots. They recorded shanties numbers like "Whup Jamboree" and "The Golden Vanity", as well as folk dance numbers like "Hello Susan Brown". Their rendition of the southern traditional prison work song “Ain’t No More Cane On This Brazos” combines lyrics from several different established versions from over the years. They could do rousing gospel music numbers like "You Can Tell The World", "I Feel So Good About It (Sin Bound Train)", and "One Day When I Was Lost (Easter Morn)".
They were the first folk group to record many of the songs of Tom Paxton, such as "The Marvelous Toy", "What Did You Learn In School Today?", and "We Didn't Know". They also sang the work of Woody Guthrie ("The Great Historical Bum (Bragging Song)"), Shel Silverstein ("The Hip Song (It Does Not Pay To Be Hip)", "Yowzah" "Three Legged Man"), and Bob Dylan ("Blowin' in the Wind" (they were in fact the first to release it, but Peter, Paul and Mary's subsequent rendition became the best-known cover version), "With God On Our Side", "Mr.
The Mitchell Trio also did the first major recording of John Denver's later hit "For Baby (For Bobbi)" and also handled his "Leaving on a Jet Plane". Their final album offered a soft, harmonized version of The Beatles' "She Loves You". Johnny Cash cited their version of "Four Strong Winds" as a stylistic influence and included it on his Artist's Choice album of favorites.
Murphey said he hopes people will learn about the importance of the trio. They tackled many controversial topics in their songs, so controversial that many radio stations refused to play them.
“The real story is that they were better than anyone,” Murphey said. “There was no one in the folk world who could do what they did vocally.
Reunions and Later Years
The Mitchell/Kobluk/Frazier trio and John Denver united in 1987 for several concerts, some broadcast on PBS. The Mitchell/Kobluk/Frazier trio reunited again in 2005 for a short program, as part of a concert also featuring Tom Paxton and The Kingston Trio's current lineup, in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Mitchell/Kobluk/Frazier reunited again for a one-night performance on October 6, 2007, in Spokane, home of their alma mater, and where Mitchell and Kobluk live about two blocks apart. For several years they continued to tour with artists like Tom Paxton and performed for President Obama at a 40th anniversary celebration in Washington D.C. for Representative Dave Obey, who is a fan of the group.
When Kobluk put down the Mitchell Trio, he thought it was for good and forever. The group went 17 years without appearing. But they resurfaced for a 1985 reunion gig, with Mitchell himself joining Kobluk and Frazier. Since then they have played handfuls of gigs here and there, including a filmed reunion in 1987 that also included Denver.
This year, the trios four appearances included one at the World Folk Music Association convention in Washington, D.C., and one this week in Aspen. The Chad Mitchell Trio will be featured at the eighth annual Musical Tribute to John Denver concert on Saturday at the Wheeler Opera House. The trio will be backed by Paul Prestopino, David Ander and Bob Hefferan, all of whom played with the trio in its heyday. Mike Taylor, who co-wrote Sunshine on My Shoulder and Rocky Mountain High with Denver, will appear at both shows, Friday and Saturday. Both shows are fund-raisers for Challenge Aspen.
Mitchell questions just how relevant some of the trios old material can be four-plus decades later. Topical songs like John Birch Society, and The Barry Boys, a barb aimed at right-wing presidential candidate Barry Goldwater, arent going to go over these days. Draft Dodger Rag, however, has continuing pertinence.
The problem we face is that a lot of it was political and social satire, said Mitchell. So that becomes an issue in this time period.
But Kobluk and Mitchell agree that the Mitchell Trio can still be musically sound. And Kobluk goes further, suggesting that audiences can still feel something in the consciousness of the art, even if the topicality has faded away.
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