Chad Mitchell (born 5 December 1936), is best known as a founder member of The Chad Mitchell Trio, an American vocal group who performed traditional folk songs.
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| Chad 2nd from right in University group |
Chad Mitchell from Portland, Oregon, was a student at Gonzaga University in Spokane, Washington, on a choral scholarship, when he met Mike Kobluk (born 1937), from British Columbia. Together with a third student, Mike Pugh, they formed a trio in 1958, a three-way partnership that was named the Chad Mitchell Trio because his name sounded best. The next year, with the folk music revival just taking off, they headed for New York City and secured a gig at the Blue Angel nightclub in Greenwich Village, initially for four weeks but soon extended for 12 weeks, billed with South African singer Miriam Makeba and comedian Shelley Berman. Both Makeba and the Chad Mitchell Trio were subsequently selected by Harry Belafonte to appear with him at the Carnegie Hall show that was recorded and released by RCA.
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| Chad Mitchell. Joe Frazier and Mike Kobluk |
The group was signed to Colpix Records in 1960 and released one album, The Chad Mitchell Trio Arrives, which passed by the public largely without notice. From that effort, the Chad Mitchell Trio did pick up musical advisor Milt Okun, who helped direct them to the songs best suited to their abilities and assisted in helping them avoid sounding too much like the Kingston Trio.
Mike Pugh dropped out of the group soon after the release of that album and was replaced by baritone Joe Frazier (born 1939, Lebanon, Pennsylvania), who had classical voice training and had sung with the Robert Shaw Chorale and in the choruses of several Broadway shows. It was around this same time that the trio also added to its instrumental muscle in the person of Jim McGuinn, a guitarist who had begun to make a splash locally and from a stay as a support player with the Limeliters. McGuinn remained with the group until 1963 when he lit out for Los Angeles and eventual rock stardom as co-founder of the Byrds.
The trio was signed to Kapp Records, a division of MCA, in 1961. By that time, the folk music revival was in full swing, and the group found a very receptive and accommodating audience at the Brooklyn College concert that was recorded as Mighty Day on Campus. This live recording worked so well that Kapp Records and the trio decided that this was the best way in which to record the group, whose next album, At the Bitter End, was done the same way the following year from the legendary Greenwich Village club.
By this time, the Chad Mitchell Trio were one of the most popular folk groups in a field that was rapidly filling up with male and mixed male/female vocal groups. Part of the secret of their success, both on-stage and on their albums, was that they presented a careful mix of topical songs and humour, and some of the latter, although also at times topical (their recording of "The John Birch Society" remains a very funny song, as well as the probable inspiration for Bob Dylan's formerly banned "Talking John Birch Society Blues"), was also sometimes just goofy.
The first real problems for the Chad Mitchell Trio came up over Bob Dylan's "Blowin' in the Wind." Dylan was still virtually unknown when the trio had discovered the song in 1962. They were eager to record it, but their producer at Kapp didn't want them to do the song, either as a single, as they proposed, or even as a track on their forthcoming new album, The Chad Mitchell Trio in Action. The dispute blew up in the faces of all concerned when "Blowin' in the Wind," as recorded by Peter, Paul and Mary, became a number two single and suddenly established them as the best-known folk trio of the early '60s -- their accompanying album, and most of their subsequent records, routinely sold in the hundreds of thousands and millions, while the Chad Mitchell Trio were left in the shadows, part of a commercial backwater. The damage had been done, however, not only to the group's commercial fortunes, but also to its relationship with its producer and its label.
A change in labels to Mercury Records during 1965 failed to settle matters, as the new people in charge of their recording career saw the era waning for folk trios, and wanted instead to push Chad Mitchell as a solo act. The disputes between Mitchell, Frazier, and Kobluk worsened, caused by the obvious advantage that Mitchell had in terms of name recognition, and a change in name to the Mitchell Trio didn't help very much.
Mitchell left the group in 1965, to be replaced by a young John Denver, while the ensemble itself was rechristened the Mitchell Trio. Frazier left two years later, and Kobluk exited a year after that -- Denver kept a trio together with new members David Boise and Mike Johnson, under the name of Denver, Boise & Johnson, until his own solo career began in 1969 on RCA, courtesy of Milt Okun's efforts.
In the years since, the original members of the classic Chad Mitchell Trio -- Mitchell, Frazier, and Kobluk -- have occasionally gotten back together to play for audiences who remember the best days of the early-'60s folk revival. On November 15th, 2014, The Chad Mitchell Trio performed their final concert of their 55 year career.
(Edited from AllMusic article by Bruce Elder)