Biography
In the early years of the 1960s the Chad Mitchell Trio ranked among the leading vocal attractions on the collegiate and nightclub folk circuit, briefly matching the established Kingston Trio and the newer act Peter, Paul and Mary. A single error in judgment by their record company prevented them from becoming one of the decade’s most lasting folk trios.
Although the Chad Mitchell Trio became identified with New York City during their strongest period—where they cut three live albums in successive years—their roots lay at the opposite side of the country. Chad Mitchell, born in 1936 in Portland, Oregon, was studying on a choral scholarship at Gonzaga University in Spokane, Washington, when he encountered Mike Kobluk, born in 1937 in British Columbia. Along with fellow student Mike Pugh they formed a trio in 1958; the partnership took the name Chad Mitchell Trio simply because that name projected most effectively. The following year, as the folk revival accelerated, they traveled to New York City and obtained an engagement at the Blue Angel nightclub in Greenwich Village. What began as a four-week booking was extended to twelve weeks, with the trio sharing the bill alongside South African singer Miriam Makeba and comedian Shelley Berman. Both Makeba and the Chad Mitchell Trio were then chosen by Harry Belafonte for his Carnegie Hall concert, which RCA recorded and issued.
Colpix Records signed the group in 1960 and released the album The Chad Mitchell Trio Arrives, which attracted little public attention. From that project the trio gained the services of musical advisor Milt Okun, who guided them toward repertoire suited to their voices and helped them avoid too close a resemblance to the Kingston Trio. Mike Pugh departed shortly after the album’s appearance and was succeeded by baritone Joe Frazier, born in 1939 in Lebanon, Pennsylvania, who possessed classical training and had performed with the Robert Shaw Chorale as well as in several Broadway choruses. Around the same period the trio strengthened its instrumental support by adding guitarist Jim McGuinn, already gaining local notice and recently returned from work with the Limeliters. McGuinn stayed until 1963—he appears in the background of the At the Bitter End cover photograph—before heading to Los Angeles, where he co-founded the Byrds.
Kapp Records, an MCA division, signed the trio in 1961. By then the folk revival had reached its peak, and the group drew an enthusiastic response at the Brooklyn College concert captured on Mighty Day on Campus. The success of that live recording led Kapp and the trio to adopt the same approach for the following year’s At the Bitter End, recorded at the renowned Greenwich Village venue.
At this stage the Chad Mitchell Trio stood among the most popular folk ensembles in a rapidly expanding field of male and mixed vocal groups. Their appeal onstage and on record rested on a deliberate balance of topical material and humor; some of the latter remained pointed, as in their version of “The John Birch Society,” which stayed amusing while possibly inspiring Bob Dylan’s once-banned “Talking John Birch Society Blues,” yet other numbers were simply playful. Audiences viewed them as witty and irreverent without seeming threatening, sensible rather than radical—qualities that secured their selection for a Kennedy White House cultural-exchange tour of South America after more overtly political folk acts had been passed over. That same irreverence later distanced them from the more radical factions that came to dominate folk and folk-rock. In 1962, however, the approach succeeded without question. Moreover, the trio’s vocal blend, especially once Frazier joined, proved consistently strong, at times surpassing the Kingston Trio in precision. They managed blues numbers such as “Alberta” and inspirational pieces with equal assurance, generating expansive harmonies with apparent ease.
The first significant setback arose over Bob Dylan’s “Blowin’ in the Wind.” Still largely unknown in 1962, Dylan had supplied the song via a demo passed to the trio by Milt Okun, who had received it from Dylan’s manager Albert Grossman. Eager to record it, the group proposed either a single or an album track on The Chad Mitchell Trio in Action, but their Kapp producer declined. The decision proved costly when Peter, Paul and Mary—also guided by Okun—released their version, which reached number two and established them as the era’s preeminent folk trio; their albums subsequently sold in the hundreds of thousands and millions. The Chad Mitchell Trio remained commercially overshadowed. Compounding the error, Kapp quickly re-pressed and retitled the In Action album Blowin’ in the Wind in 1963. The commercial and professional damage to the group, its producer, and its label was lasting.
More than a year later, the newly formed duo Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel, seeking footing within the folk boom, selected two songs from the Chad Mitchell Trio’s At the Bitter End album—Bob Gibson and Hamilton Camp’s “You Can Tell the World” and Ed McCurdy’s “Last Night I Had the Strangest Dream”—as the opening tracks of their debut Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M. Those selections initially changed little; yet roughly a year afterward another track from the same album, Paul Simon’s “The Sounds of Silence,” was overdubbed with electric instruments in a Byrds-style arrangement, topped the U.S. charts, launched Simon & Garfunkel’s stardom, and ensured that their Chad Mitchell Trio covers reached millions of listeners in subsequent decades.
A 1965 move to Mercury Records brought no resolution; the new executives judged the folk-trio era finished and sought to promote Chad Mitchell as a solo artist. Tensions among Mitchell, Frazier, and Kobluk intensified over Mitchell’s greater name recognition, and a change to the Mitchell Trio did little to ease them. By then the commercial window had closed—Dylan had electrified and rock had absorbed much of the folk audience—yet the group continued recording for two more years. Mitchell departed in 1965 and was replaced by a young John Denver; the ensemble was renamed the Mitchell Trio. Frazier exited two years later, Kobluk the year after that. Denver sustained a trio with David Boise and Mike Johnson under the name Denver, Boise & Johnson until launching his solo career on RCA in 1969 with Milt Okun’s assistance.
In later years the original members of the classic Chad Mitchell Trio—Mitchell, Frazier, and Kobluk—have reunited occasionally for audiences recalling the peak of the early-1960s folk revival. Their Kapp, Colpix, and Mercury recordings have been reissued at different times, largely to capitalize on John Denver’s 1970s success; Denver himself has taken part in several of those reunions.
Although the Chad Mitchell Trio became identified with New York City during their strongest period—where they cut three live albums in successive years—their roots lay at the opposite side of the country. Chad Mitchell, born in 1936 in Portland, Oregon, was studying on a choral scholarship at Gonzaga University in Spokane, Washington, when he encountered Mike Kobluk, born in 1937 in British Columbia. Along with fellow student Mike Pugh they formed a trio in 1958; the partnership took the name Chad Mitchell Trio simply because that name projected most effectively. The following year, as the folk revival accelerated, they traveled to New York City and obtained an engagement at the Blue Angel nightclub in Greenwich Village. What began as a four-week booking was extended to twelve weeks, with the trio sharing the bill alongside South African singer Miriam Makeba and comedian Shelley Berman. Both Makeba and the Chad Mitchell Trio were then chosen by Harry Belafonte for his Carnegie Hall concert, which RCA recorded and issued.
Colpix Records signed the group in 1960 and released the album The Chad Mitchell Trio Arrives, which attracted little public attention. From that project the trio gained the services of musical advisor Milt Okun, who guided them toward repertoire suited to their voices and helped them avoid too close a resemblance to the Kingston Trio. Mike Pugh departed shortly after the album’s appearance and was succeeded by baritone Joe Frazier, born in 1939 in Lebanon, Pennsylvania, who possessed classical training and had performed with the Robert Shaw Chorale as well as in several Broadway choruses. Around the same period the trio strengthened its instrumental support by adding guitarist Jim McGuinn, already gaining local notice and recently returned from work with the Limeliters. McGuinn stayed until 1963—he appears in the background of the At the Bitter End cover photograph—before heading to Los Angeles, where he co-founded the Byrds.
Kapp Records, an MCA division, signed the trio in 1961. By then the folk revival had reached its peak, and the group drew an enthusiastic response at the Brooklyn College concert captured on Mighty Day on Campus. The success of that live recording led Kapp and the trio to adopt the same approach for the following year’s At the Bitter End, recorded at the renowned Greenwich Village venue.
At this stage the Chad Mitchell Trio stood among the most popular folk ensembles in a rapidly expanding field of male and mixed vocal groups. Their appeal onstage and on record rested on a deliberate balance of topical material and humor; some of the latter remained pointed, as in their version of “The John Birch Society,” which stayed amusing while possibly inspiring Bob Dylan’s once-banned “Talking John Birch Society Blues,” yet other numbers were simply playful. Audiences viewed them as witty and irreverent without seeming threatening, sensible rather than radical—qualities that secured their selection for a Kennedy White House cultural-exchange tour of South America after more overtly political folk acts had been passed over. That same irreverence later distanced them from the more radical factions that came to dominate folk and folk-rock. In 1962, however, the approach succeeded without question. Moreover, the trio’s vocal blend, especially once Frazier joined, proved consistently strong, at times surpassing the Kingston Trio in precision. They managed blues numbers such as “Alberta” and inspirational pieces with equal assurance, generating expansive harmonies with apparent ease.
The first significant setback arose over Bob Dylan’s “Blowin’ in the Wind.” Still largely unknown in 1962, Dylan had supplied the song via a demo passed to the trio by Milt Okun, who had received it from Dylan’s manager Albert Grossman. Eager to record it, the group proposed either a single or an album track on The Chad Mitchell Trio in Action, but their Kapp producer declined. The decision proved costly when Peter, Paul and Mary—also guided by Okun—released their version, which reached number two and established them as the era’s preeminent folk trio; their albums subsequently sold in the hundreds of thousands and millions. The Chad Mitchell Trio remained commercially overshadowed. Compounding the error, Kapp quickly re-pressed and retitled the In Action album Blowin’ in the Wind in 1963. The commercial and professional damage to the group, its producer, and its label was lasting.
More than a year later, the newly formed duo Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel, seeking footing within the folk boom, selected two songs from the Chad Mitchell Trio’s At the Bitter End album—Bob Gibson and Hamilton Camp’s “You Can Tell the World” and Ed McCurdy’s “Last Night I Had the Strangest Dream”—as the opening tracks of their debut Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M. Those selections initially changed little; yet roughly a year afterward another track from the same album, Paul Simon’s “The Sounds of Silence,” was overdubbed with electric instruments in a Byrds-style arrangement, topped the U.S. charts, launched Simon & Garfunkel’s stardom, and ensured that their Chad Mitchell Trio covers reached millions of listeners in subsequent decades.
A 1965 move to Mercury Records brought no resolution; the new executives judged the folk-trio era finished and sought to promote Chad Mitchell as a solo artist. Tensions among Mitchell, Frazier, and Kobluk intensified over Mitchell’s greater name recognition, and a change to the Mitchell Trio did little to ease them. By then the commercial window had closed—Dylan had electrified and rock had absorbed much of the folk audience—yet the group continued recording for two more years. Mitchell departed in 1965 and was replaced by a young John Denver; the ensemble was renamed the Mitchell Trio. Frazier exited two years later, Kobluk the year after that. Denver sustained a trio with David Boise and Mike Johnson under the name Denver, Boise & Johnson until launching his solo career on RCA in 1969 with Milt Okun’s assistance.
In later years the original members of the classic Chad Mitchell Trio—Mitchell, Frazier, and Kobluk—have reunited occasionally for audiences recalling the peak of the early-1960s folk revival. Their Kapp, Colpix, and Mercury recordings have been reissued at different times, largely to capitalize on John Denver’s 1970s success; Denver himself has taken part in several of those reunions.
Albums
Virgo Moon (2020 Re-Release)
2020
Soul Good
2018
Ship of State (feat. Anne-Claire Mitchell)
2014
Himself
2005
Love, A Feeling Of
2004
Chad
1969
Singles
