Introduction to "The Mitchell Trio Song Book" BY ROBERT SHELTON

INTRODUCTION

BY ROBERT SHELTON

YOU CANNOT, TO BEND AN OLD SAW slightly out of shape, judge a singer by the cover of his record album. Nor by the cut of his clothes or chin.

The three young men who make up The Mitchell Trio could pass for a schoolteacher, a male model, and a professional college student. Until you hear them sing. Only on the surface do they suggest the appearances that films, magazines, and television would like to give of "All-American men."

Clean features, well-tailored trousers, slim waistlines, a happy-go-lucky look. Hardly what one would expect of artists, let alone folk artists.

The men of the Mitchell Trio don't look as if they were worried about the state of the world or would try to do anything about it if they were. But beneath the surface Chad Mitchell, Mike Kobluk, and Joe Frazier are serious artists who consistently explore the better, deeper use of their vocal resources. The members of The Mitchell Trio are members of American society with more spine than half a dozen other folk aggregations.

Taken only on the level of vocal expertise. The Mitchell Trio deserves serious consideration as one of the ablest singing groups in the land. But there is something of even greater merit: they are social barometers and commentators who are willing to speak out and sing out about the stupidities, foibles, and prejudices they see around them.

The Mitchell Trio may be as American as morn's apple pie, but the threesome are also descendants of Aristophanes, who used wit and aesthetic artifice to prick the conscience of a nation. The satirical songs of the trio have become their strongest bid for individuality in a sea of folk groups and have given courage and direction to many a topical and satiric song writer. Their format for social criticism and satire is the ancient but still effective prescription that wraps the bitter pill of dissent in the sweet layering of humor.

The achievements of Mitchell-Kobluk-Frazier are more sizable than they would probably admit. They are modest, unaffected men in their mid-twenties. They have made a bit of money with their singing since they went professional in 1959, but it appears to have had little effect on them or on their thinking. To talk to them, one would think that everyone else deserves all the credit: Milt Okun, their musical director; or Frank Fried, their manager; or Harry Belafonte, their one-time mentor, or the Rev. Reinard Beaver, who helped them get started.

But the three singers should be lavishly praised for what they have done and are continuing to do. They consistently make the distinction between the folk-music revival and their unique stylistic course. They prefer to place themselves in the goliard or troubadour tradition rather than the folk genre. Still and all, the folk-revival audience has given them their largest initial support. Their use of folk songs gave them the framework and springboard for other satirical material. And, although they have the polish and professionalism of the goliard, they also fit into the rack and pillory of the outspoken balladeers of history who have been the melodic gadflies of men in power.

All of this success has been achieved with the most gracious of good spirits, on stage and off. Humor, rather than anger, is the well-tempered clavier on which they play their musical-philosophical tunes.

On a purely musical level. The Mitchell Trio can hold its head up proudly among the rash of brash young pop-folk groups that emerged in the wake of the tremendous 1958 rise of the Kingston Trio. The Mitchell Trio's arrangements, showing the good taste of Milt Okun, are models of planning and execution. The voices of Chad, Mike, and Joe are among the best of any popular vocal group to be heard today. Their place of lasting importance is predictable, for while other pop-folk groups were pandering to popular taste and making fast money with vulgarized folk arrangements, Chad Mitchell, Mike Kobluk, and Joe Frazier held resolutely to their standards and artistic goals.

Although the members of the trio are only twenty-seven and have been together for only five years, their story is a full and exciting one. The trio's artistic-philosophic growth is one of the genuine success stores of the folk revival. This introduction will attempt to give the highlights of that development, the stories of the three boys, and a brief history of their careers, their songs, and their attitudes toward their material and their audience.

Essentially it is the story of three independent-minded individuals working together for a single purpose. It is the story of ethics in an age and a field where compromise and opportunism have been the easier and far more prevalent course of action.
This is, if you will, an extended fan letter from an admirer and a listener who has watched them grow and mature into serious, meaningful artists. For all their wit and whimsy, they are artists who have left their stamp on the face of American popular music. Although the members of The Mitchell Trio do not write songs, they have written a meaningful chapter in the history of American music.

ALTHOUGH IT IS POPULARLY BELIEVED that Chad Mitchell is the leader of the trio, actually all three members are equal participants as leaders, followers, and partners. On stage one sees a group that has developed cohesiveness into a group personality. Off stage, each is his own man with his own background and his own plans for the future.

Chad Mitchell

The only child of a Portland, Oregon shipyard worker. At the age of seven Chad moved with his family to Spokane where his musical career began:

"I went to a nice, sophisticated grade school and I organized a third-grade plastic flute band. I also studied piano. I was the kind of student who worked all year memorizing three pieces so I could get a good grade in the music festival. Practically, I was an extension of my music teacher, who was anxious that I do well in the festival. I never did learn to play the piano very well. My father was musical, he had a very nice voice. My mother was amusical."

The next years are vague in Chad's memory. "We lost our house . . . and my father moved away somewhere." Then he and his mother switched to apartment-house living. At another school, he had his first contact with Negroes and Japanese children. He began to sing. . . .

"The first official group I formed was a high school quartet. Pretty soon we were performing for women's clubs and Lions' Clubs and Rotary Clubs. Before long we were picking up $10 here and there and then $20. In fact, we even had our own TV show on a local station for a number of weeks. We were opposite the Friday night fights so there's some question as to whether anybody saw us.

"High school was great. I was sort of the all-round, All-American type, with good grades and a good athletic ability. I had scholarships to a couple of colleges. One of them was to Yale, and if I had chosen that, I probably would have been a doctor now. But I chose a Navy scholarship to Stanford because it was closer to home.

"We had a close-knit group in high school. Fine, outstanding young people . . . but we didn't know anything. I studied hard, but I wasn't vitally interested in anything."

College years were to be a time of soul-searching for Chad. He recalls being lost and of waiting for things to happen. Chad says he was "lazy, intellectually. I wanted to want something. I knew there must be something beside college, but I didn't know what it was." Chad tried engineering at Stanford, then transferred to medicine at the University of Washington. He heard of a music scholarship at Gonzaga University. Accepting it, he then encountered "a remarkable person," the director of the Gonzaga men's glee club, Lyle Moore.

Moore, Chad recalls, faced his choristers "squarely, for the non-musical clods that we were, and whipped some real emotion, musically, out of us. . . .

"I was turning more and more to music, not with any idea of making a career out of it . . . I didn't definitely give up the idea of an academic career until the trio had been going on for a few years . . . but I guess I turned to music out of insecurity, to fill the void of other interests. The trio was formed in collage. Every time it showed signs of being a' temporary college thing and sputtering to a halt, there was Father Beaver encouraging it on. I'm sure that, in my mother's eyes, he was ruining a perfectly good medical career.

"We were copying everyone under the sun. I wanted to emote like Belafonte. He was it, as far as I was concerned. The vibrancy of The Kingston Trio appealed to me. I still knew nothing about folk music. We could sing better, but we knew less than most of the folk groups starting today."

A particular song was to be a turning point of understanding and identification for Chad Mitchell. It was the old Irish-American antiwar song, "When Johnnie Comes Marching Home."

"I was excited. It was my first deep emotional reaction to this kind of thing. It led directly to an active interest in what all these songs were about. I suppose that, without my knowing it, this was my point of decision . . . to commit myself to music. Although I didn't drop the idea of returning to college for some time, I guess it was at this point that I found what I wanted, that 'something beside college.' "

Reflecting on the years of growth and work that it took to get The Mitchell Trio to its present state, Chad sums up the effort:
"When I think of the hours of discussion, the ideas that have been involved in each piece of material we've developed, I know that we have a broader scope than just singing. But I am not a performer because I have a political message to deliver. I'm a performer because I have an artistic message to deliver. I feel like expressing myself creatively to an audience. I choose music because I'm best at it. If I couldn't express myself creatively, I don't think I'd be working."

The future: "I'd love to just roam . . . and absorb."

Mike Kobluk

Until he enrolled at Gonzaga, Mike Kobluk had lived his entire life in the town of Trail, British Columbia, Canada. He had a brother and two sisters but was the first m his family to be born in a hospital. His parents had emigrated from the Ukraine and met in Trail during the days of the settlement of the community.

Mike's father had played the violin, doing old country fiddling "like I suppose they do in the Ukraine and like I suppose they still do on the prairies right now." His mother played piano by ear. Mike was a fine athlete in high school. His prime sport was ice hockey, and at one point he turned down two hockey scholarships to major U.S. universities.

"I guess I really started singing in high school, in the glee club. For no other reason than it was fun. I also joined a Gregorian Chant choir. That gave me my first real love for singing. I thought the Gregorian Chant was a particularly beautiful kind of music. I still do. A little later I became a member of a high-school quartet . . . something like The Four Freshmen. We called ourselves The Pastels. I loved to sing. I still do."

Mike began his college studies in his hometown of Trail, at an extension of the University of British Columbia. His principal interests then were mathematics and writing-show business was not even a whisper in his mind. But the "precision and creativity" of math and writing appealed to him. He majored in engineering and pondered a career in architecture.
Then, like Chad, Mike switched his major, to business administration, and school, to Gonzaga. "Later I went back to engineering and finally ended up with majors in math and English. I was searching. . . . But singing for a career . . . that never entered my mind."

Mike has since married and come to within seventeen credit-hours of graduating. He has wanted to get the degree but keeps delaying it.

At Gonzaga, Mike met Chad in the men's chorus. "I knew nothing about folk music. I had heard of Belafonte and Burl lves, and maybe The Weavers, but my interest in folk music didn't develop until I had been singing it for a while, after the trio had already been formed."

The glee club was disbanded in the fall of 1959, but the spirit of camaraderie "could not be dissolved." Mike recalls:
"Some of us sought each other out and started singing together on our own. It wasn't long before Chad and I and a fellow named Mike Pugh were singing regularly at various social functions . . . for kicks and beer money. Following the trend, we were then imitating the popular folk people of the time, adding just about nothing of our own. But the one who really got the trio moving, literally and figuratively, was Father Beaver.

"The trio has given me more enjoyment than anything I've ever done. That doesn't mean I necessarily want to stay with it forever. The traveling is exciting, but hard. It would be good if we could somehow make the trio, as we grow, a secondary activity to our individual interests . . . sort of like The Weavers did . . . so we could pursue other interests and still have the trio to express our ideas. Maybe I'm trying to project too much into the future, but someday I'd like to settle down.
"I don't know what my own special interest would be. At one time, I thought I might like to work with choral music. And then, I'm still interested in math, but not from the pure mathematics point of view. I still feel like I did in college. I'd like to bring together mathematics and writing, writing about happenings in mathematics. Writing in some scientific field would bring me great pleasure."

Joe Frazier

The last member to join The Mitchell Trio is the oldest of eight children of a Lebanon, Pennsylvania, steel welder. His father used to play guitar and sing songs like "A Shanty in Old Shantytown" and "I Only Want a Buddy, Not a Sweetheart."

Joe recalls trying duets with his sister when he was about ten and she was eight. "We started going all over the state singing at places. Then I won a few amateur contests and by the time I was in late junior high school and early high school I had my own radio program in my town."

When Joe went to high school he began to study voice and sing from the classical repertoire. . . .

"I don't know if I had any goal in sight beyond learning. I suppose I wanted to be in show business, but I had the idea that so many people have: 'Oh yes, you have something and your voice is probably nice, but there are so many people in show business . . . you can't buck it.' That sort of thing. You find out later, when you get to New York, especially, that it isn't quite true. There are many people hanging around with aspirations, but if you do have something and you really apply yourself, use a lot of determined energy, there's a pretty good chance that you can do rather well. So . . . I guess I would have liked to have been a singer, but it didn't seem possible, it was too far away."

At Lebanon Valley College, Joe concentrated on sociology and political science, continuing his voice studies on the side, and in a glee club, as well. In his glee club he met his wife, Charlotte, a music student at the Lebanon Valley Conservatory. With his wife's urgings that he try show business, he transferred to the Julius Hart School of Music in Hartford, Connecticut. "It was basically a performer's school . . . mostly opera. I decided to apply myself, to be a singer."

Joe met a member of the After-Dinner Opera Company, probably the smallest opera company in the world, with one woman member and two men. The group does highly satirical, stylized, and modern material, no older than Offenbach. The member of the After-Dinner troupe asked Joe if he would like to audition and be an understudy.

"I jumped at the chance. Once I got to New York, I realized the grim truth that understudies only get paid when they perform and, in the case of opera, not very much. So I did what a lot of singers do at first . . . I sang in churches, synagogues, did summer stock and industrial shows. And then I heard that The Chad Mitchell Trio was looking for a replacement.

"I think I was the 152nd singer to be auditioned. At the time I was doing an industrial show for Oldsmobile. The musical director of the show, a man with one of the finest classical voices in New York, is a friend of Milt Okun, the musical director of the trio, and he recommended me to Milt. When I walked in for the audition, they asked me if I knew any folk songs. Well, I did know some, not because I was interested in folk music directly, but because I was interested in the social-political content of many of them. I had some Pete Seeger records, and Josh White, and some of the old Weavers songs. I liked them for what they were saying; they expressed what I believed. So I sat down and sang If I Had a Hammer,' without accompaniment, and when I finished, they didn't know whether they wanted me or not.

"I was pretty determined, though, and I spent a whole week singing, learning almost every song in their repertoire which, at that time, wasn't too big. I went back for another audition and they still weren't sure. I guess I was pretty show-businessy and they had the idea at the time that they didn't want to be a part of show biz. Since then they've realized it's not such a bad thing-it's what you make it. But the summer was almost over, they had a booking coming up in Las Vegas, they saw that I learned very quickly and they thought I might fit in.

"They may have not known for sure if they wanted me, but I know I wanted them. After all, doing Broadway shows was great fun-the make-up, the sets, it was all fun. But there was nothing really to it beyond that-beyond just pleasant fun. You're not expressing anything, directly. Here was a chance to really express. I had just been to my first hootenanny in the home of friends. I had met people who were interested in folk music. And this came right on top of it. They finally said, 'Let's try it at Las Vegas for a month to see if we like you and you like us.' It worked out fine."

As for the future, Joe Frazier puts it this way:

"I think the trio's future has something to offer, even after the folk fad is gone. Interest in folk music seems to get higher and higher. The reason is that it has something to say, it has a basis. It's not just a different rhythm, a different sound, another way of saying 1 love you, you love me, let's go to the dance' or Isn't autumn beautiful?' It has a foundation in basic emotions, problems, things going on in our society. Things will happen in the future that will have to be commented on. I think we can stay around, to one degree or another, for as long as we want."

MAGAZINE AND NEWSPAPER FEATURE writers have told and retold the story of the 1959 meteoric rise of The Mitchell Trio. The story has been a natural, because the first trip to New York from Gonzaga University had all the elements of a show-business legend in the making.

It is probably the first known instance of a Roman Catholic priest helping to catapult a vocal group to stardom.

The Rev. Reinard W. Beaver, assistant pastor at St. Augustine Roman Catholic Church in Spokane, is now an Army chaplain in West Germany. In the late fifties he and Chad had become good friends. Father Beaver took a strong interest in the trio that had grown out of the glee club at Gonzaga. At that time the group included Mike Pugh, a fellow student who later dropped out of the trio to continue his education.

At the beginning of the summer school vacation of 1959, Father Beaver hatched a little plan that was to propel the group toward a professional career. The priest was scheduled to attend an Army Chaplains' School at Fort Slocum, near New York City. Before heading East, he and Chad drove up to Trail, British Columbia, to visit Mike Kobluk. In the car, Father Beaver suggested to Chad that the threesome join him on the trip and perhaps pick up some money and experience along the way by singing. The chaplain was then thinking only that the boys would spend a broadening summer in New York and would rejoin him on the return to Gonzaga in the fall.

Arriving at Mike's house, Chad said nonchalantly: "Hi. We're going to New York with Father Beaver." Mike, who had been painting a house for his sister, put the paint brush down and replied instantly: "Let's go!"

In short order, they gathered up Mike Pugh and their guitarist, Dennis Collins, and were off "to conquer New York," in Mike Kobluk's phrase. Here is how he recalls that trip:

"Three singers and an accompanist, with about $100 between them. But the gasoline was supplied by the government, so why worry? The second day out we were approaching Miles City, Montana. It was getting dark and we were getting hungry. We heard an announcement on the car radio: the Miles City Country Club was holding its first annual dinner that night. Father Beaver said: 'That's where we're singing tonight.' He changed into his Roman collar, drove to the country club, and went in alone to arrange the booking. His pitch was that he had a young trio out there that was going to New York to appear on The Ed Sullivan Show. Father Beaver is to be forgiven his 'sin'; we made it on the Sullivan show four years later.) About fifteen minutes later, he came out. We had a deal . . . not for money, but for a steak dinner.

"We sang for about a half-hour. They liked us. Someone started a collection and we ended up with about sixty silver dollars. Another man made a phone call and arranged for us to sing at a Miles City nightclub, where we picked up another $30 or $40. Our feeling was: 'Wow! If we can do this in Miles City, what will we do in New York City!' "

Arriving in New York in August, Mike Kobluk sent a card to his family that caught the spirit of wide-eyed amazement among the young singers:

Dear Morn, Dad and Everyone:
New York is all I've ever pictured it to be, only about a million times more. I've never seen so many lights, so many people, so many cars, so many people, so many buildings, so many people, so many souvenir shops, so many people, so many night spots, before, ever.
Love, Mike

The "so many people" in New York were not immediately as impressed as those in Miles City had been. Father Beaver helped set up auditions with Julius Monk, impresario of topical revues, and the managers of The Blue Angel and The Village Barn. The threesome sang from the stage of The Village Barn within hours of their arrival in Manhattan.

Three or four more days passed and things were looking bleak. The three Gonzaga students were running perilously short of money. They lived at an Army base for fifty cents a day.

Through a friend of a friend, Father Beaver contacted Bertha Case, a literary agent who also represented Nina Simone, the pianist-singer. Miss Case was immediately enthusiastic when she heard the group and offered to represent them. She gambled and loaned them money until the show-business wheels would begin to turn.

They turned quickly. A recording contract with Colpix Records was signed and the boys joined the American Federation of Musicians. Their booking was being handled by the General Artists Corporation, a large talent agency.

The Colpix Records people, believing that the group could use some new material and arrangements, brought in Milt Okun. This was the beginning of a long and felicitous relationship with "the fourth member of the trio." Milt was then working as conductor and arranger with Harry Belafonte Enterprises. He is a gentle-spoken, fatherly (or brotherly, since the boys had a "fatherly" helper in the Rev. Beaver) man in his thirties who quickly recognized the potential of The Chad Mitchell Trio, as they called themselves until recently. After the Colpix disk was taped, Milt. signed a contract with Chad and the two Mikes, to serve as their musical director and' arranger.

Father Beaver was in for a surprise. The trio was having too good a time in New York, and he had to drive back to Spokane by himself. Another audition for the trio at The Blue Angel showed more promise. Herbert Jacoby and Max Gordon, co-owners of the famous talent-finding club, booked the trio for two weeks at the Angel. This was the turning point. Audiences and reviewers were ecstatic. Jacoby and Gordon immediately extended the trio's run at the Angel to ten weeks.
For five straight weeks, the trio appeared on Arthur Godfrey's radio show. By Thanksgiving, 1959, the group was to appear on its first major television program, The Pat Boone Show. Other bookings followed in quick succession.

A high point of their first season in New York was an appearance with Belafonte, Odetta, and Miriam Makeba at a benefit concert at Carnegie Hall on May 2, 1960, for the Wiltwyck School for Boys. "We had come a long way from Miles City," Mike Kobluk recalls.

It had been Milt Okun's strong belief that the trio could benefit greatly by working with Belafonte Enterprises, Inc., and the trio, as usual, followed their musical director's advice. There was obviously a great deal of mutual admiration between Belafonte and The Mitchell Trio. Belafonte has had a long and distinguished record of helping to develop new talent. He has said of the group: "The Chad Mitchell Trio is one of the most uniquely refreshing folk groups in America today."

For their part, the trio's attitude toward their mentor might be summarized in Joe Frazier's comment: "I get the impression that Harry Belafonte is an intelligent and tasteful man, validly concerned with rights and wrongs. On stage or off, one is always strongly aware of his magnetism."

By the summer of 1960, although work was continuing to mount for the trio, some changes were made. Chad was due for Army duty and Mike Pugh decided to return to school rather than remain a professional musician. More than 150 singers were auditioned in the search for a replacement for him. Finally, it was decided that Joe Frazier was the ideal replacement.

From late 1960 until the present, the fans of The Mitchell Trio have grown from a relatively small coterie into a mass audience, until today the trio ranks among the most popular and most imitated of the top performers.

A list of the trio's club engagements and concerts would be staggering. They have toured with Miriam Makeba and with two comedians, Bob Newhart and Milt Kamen. They have appeared at scores of college and civic auditoriums from coast to coast. They have performed at the Empire Room of the Palmer House, the Edgewater Beach Hotel, and the Drake Hotel in Chicago, the Riviera in Las Vegas, the Gate of Horn in Chicago, Basin Street East and the Bitter End in New York, the Kansas City Music Hall-and even at the biggest hall in Peoria, Illinois.

Television work has been equally vast, and is probably exceeded in number of appearances only by The New Christy Minstrels. The Mitchell Trio has been on The Dinah Shore Show, The Ed Sullivan Show, The Steve Alien Show, and The Bell Telephone Hour. A successful appearance on That Was The Week That Was brought an invitation for another appearance on the satirical show.

The Mitchell Trio has made ten appearances on the American Broadcasting Company's TV Hootenanny show. Although the trio opposed the network's blacklisting of Pete Seeger from the program, they felt they could do more by going on the show than joining the widespread singers' boycott against the show. Thus they were able to sing their famous John Birch Society satire on network television for the first time and make "an integrated appearance" with Miriam Makeba.

The Mitchell Trio, not so incidentally, has a clause in its booking contracts that forbids appearances before segregated audiences. Of the hundreds of concerts they have given, few stand out more saliently in their memories than their performance at the Birmingham Municipal Auditorium in the fall of 1963, where the first drive toward integration in Alabama occurred. It followed shortly after church burnings and bombings. Tension was high. But victory in the civil-rights campaign was aided when an audience of about 750 braved the test and heard the trio sing.

In March, 1960, "the pride and joy of Gonzaga" returned to Spokane to sing at the Coliseum Sports Show. Local papers continue to refer to the precedent of another Gonzaga drop-out who left the school in the 1930's to make a name for himself in show business - Bing Crosby.

Father Beaver was understandably proud of his boys:

"If there is any short cut to recognition and popularity, perhaps it is to be found when ability is coupled to the virtue of humility. As the trio stepped from the plane and returned home for the first time after eight exciting months in New York, it was easy to see that each member of this talented trio still retains that basic humility. . . .Wherever they entertain it is their basic humility that sets the trio sharply apart from the frequently emotional and often artificial characteristics seen in many entertainers.

By August, 1961, the reconstituted trio, with Joe Frazier fully worked into the group, was traveling hard again. From coast to coast good reviews greeted them. Student audiences were especially enthusiastic, as the following letter from the program chairman of Trenton State College will testify:

We are far more than pleased with the Mitchell Trio and Miss {Miriam] Makeba. Frankly, I have never seen as warm a demonstration given to artists by our students in my fifteen years at the college . . . . They are a real credit to the entertainment profession in every sense.

Touring with Miss Makeba was to give the trio a chance to enlarge their musical as well as human scope. They began to perform some very demanding songs in the difficult Bantu dialect with and without her, including a performance at Carnegie Hall. By this time they were working with another in their long line of able accompanists, the banjoist and guitarist Jim McGuinn. Today the trio travels with accompanists Paul Prestopino and Jacob Ander.

In the spring of 1962, The Mitchell Trio embarked on a trip to South America under the sponsorship of the State Department and The American National Theater and Academy. "Famosos can-tores Americanos" was the way the Spanish-language papers billed them.

The tour lasted from March 23 until June 22, 1962-a whirlwind visit to eleven countries in only fourteen weeks. There were concerts and receptions and stopovers in Rio de Janeiro, Porto Allegre, Florianopolis, Curitiba, SSo Paulo, Belo Horizante, Brasilia, Sao Salvador, Recife, Natal, Belem, Caracas, Port-of-Spain, Guanajuato, San Luis Potosi, Panama City, Guatemala City, Lima, Santiago, Mendoza, Buenos Aires, and Asuncion.

On every hand, the audiences and the press were warm. The trio members found college students in Latin America even more aware of what was going on in the world than students in the United States. The trio's programs offered songs of the United States and of the world, to listeners who seemed genuinely appreciative of the new listening experience. The English-language Daily Journal in Caracas wrote:

Through the medium of folklore music, The Chad Mitchell Trio is cutting across political and social differences as the trio sings its way through Latin America on a three-month goodwill tour sponsored by the United States State Department.

For all its successes, however, the boys were slightly disappointed with the tour. Some State Department officials were cautious to an extreme, and they wanted the musical Americans to double as full-time ambassadors. It was not always an easy assignment.

After the Latin American tour, the trio returned to the less challenging demands of one-nighters, concerts, and night-club engagements in the United States. They returned to a cabaret that had always symbolized good luck for them, The Blue Angel.

Changes in the group's singing were becoming obvious to their followers. The meticulous drilling and disciplining of Milt Okun was beginning to reap rich rewards. The group still had its old polish, but a new sort of freedom was giving their performances more warmth, more communicativeness. Where once there had been a seeming excess of control, the looseness of spontaneity was breathing new life into the trio's music-making. Experience, hard work, and plenty of self-criticism were beginning to tell.

At great expense the trio hired, in December, 1963, its own full-time sound man, Ray Watkins, who supervised the moving and use of six hundred pounds of expensive sound equipment. Working with the group's able road manager, Phil Green, the sound man would make sure that audiences heard the best possible reproduction of the trio's music. This is typical of the high professional standards of The Mitchell Trio, who want to give their audiences the best they can-in material, in singing, in sound.

The last year has seen two new high points in the trio's spiraling career. One was a box-office success, the other an aesthetic one. In August, 1963, the trio played at Ravinia Park near Chicago to 13,500 listeners, breaking previous attendance records there set by Joan Baez and Peter, Paul, and Mary.

The aesthetic triumph came at the Newport Folk Festival of 1964. The bulk of the festival was made up of unknown or little-known rural and city performers. Most of the talent roster of 228 were ethnic performers, but the Newport Folk Foundation board of directors felt that The Mitchell Trio deserved a place there.

Whether they were folk singers, or singers of folk songs, or goliards, Chad Mitchell, Mike Kobluk, and Joe Frazier were warmly received. The audience cheered their biting topical songs, "Barry's Boys," 'Twelve Days," and "The John Birch Society." The audience loved their more traditional material as well.

Dressed informally, in the spirit of the festival, the three won repeated rounds of applause at a topical song workshop attended by 3,000 devotees and at a major evening concert in Free-body Park attended by 15,000 persons. It was the largest single live audience they had ever sung for. But it was also a special audience of the connoisseurs, the demanding fans who knew what the traditional and contemporary folk movement was all about. It was an audience of the young generation out of which The Mitchell Trio had sprung, and for whom they spoke.

THE MITCHELL TRIO PROBABLY GIVES more thought and discussion to each new song it adds to its repertoire than any group since The Weavers. The discussions are lively, sometimes heated; in the early years they were even stronger than they are currently. Usually, debates over the addition of new material are resolved with unanimous agreement. If there is an artistic difference of opinion. Milt Okun will arbitrate. Chad, Mike, and Joe will usually agree with Milt's decisions.
The songs of The Mitchell Trio span an enormous range of material, as the music section of this book will indicate. There are traditional songs of the United States and of the world, and the songs that have given the trio its philosophical trademark-the topical-protest and satirical material.

Whatever genre of music they tackle, The Mitchell Trio works toward "getting inside" a song, If they are doing a Scottish romp or a Negro blues, they will not attempt an ethnically oriented recreation. Rather, they will deliver a modern interpretation that retains the flavor, if not the letter, of the original. Here, again, the members of the trio make it abundantly clear that they are not "real folk singers." because, by their very strict and demanding standards, "real folk singers" must have experienced the emotions contained in the song.

While respecting the modesty of their approach, this observer cannot agree completely that The Mitchell Trio is guilty of all that detachment when they essay a traditional song. This brings to mind the comment of Ed McCurdy, the well-known folk balladeer, in introducing a famous Negro spiritual. "I may not have been a motherless child," McCurdy says, "but I certainly know how one feels." Chad, Mike, and Joe may not state this concept verbally, but they appear to live it musically.

Thus, listening to their recordings or performances, we can be transported around the world-from the Southern Appalachians ("Pretty Saro," "Green Grow the Lilacs") to the Negro South ("Run, Run, Run," "Ain't No More Cane on This Brazos"). Their music can convey the listener to Latin America ("Adios Mi Corazon") to Scotland ("The Bonny Streets of Fyve-io") to Russia ("Moscow Nights," "Maladyo-zhenaya").

What The Mitchell Trio does with traditional material molded professionally into modern, polished arrangements speaks pretty much for itself. What they have done with topical-satirical material is unique. Long before Bob Dylan had come upon the scene with his angry, biting songs of protest, The Mitchell Trio was beginning to explore this area.

Satirical songs are not an easy approach. Courage rarely is. Some songs were banned on radio, some from television. People in the Kapp Records and Belafonte Enterprises organizations urged caution, prudence. Censorship, whether overt or covert, was to hamper The Mitchell Trio frequently.

Several changes in recording company affiliations and management have enabled the trio to be their own masters. After making one recording for Colpix (a second on this label was issued by Colpix in the summer of 1964 from old, obviously unrepresentative tapes), the trio moved to Kapp Records, Three LP albums were cut on Kapp, although produced by Belafonte Enterprises under the direction of Bob Bollard.

While the boys speak respectfully of the affiliation with Belafonte Enterprises, it is apparent that they soon reached a point where growth in their own independent direction was being inhibited by the Belafonte-Kapp connections. In the spring of 1962 the trio signed Frank Fried, Chicago concert and television producer, as personal manager. Besides heading his own producing office, Fried is director of folk music for Mercury Records. Moving I the Fried office and to Mercury Record ushered in a new era of freedom an self-direction for The Mitchell Trio. Now they could do much as they pleased, be as forceful as they wanted, and even increase their audience by being courageous.

The controversy that The Mitchell Trio has spurred with its satirical material is akin to the controversy that the generation of "war babies" now in its teens and twenties has spurred with conservative factions. "The Times They Are A-Changing" says Bob Dylan, and he as well as The Mitchell Trio are quite cognizant of this change. Although they are far from the Dylan rebelliousness, the trio members are as close as he is to reflecting the doubting, challenging attitudes of today's youth in America.

The songs started trouble as they simultaneously made friends for the trio. There was a complaint to the manager of a Montreal hotel about the trio's singing of "The Twelve Days of Christmas." It turned out that the complaint was made by a man who owned a munitions factory in West Germany.

There was a rumpus at The Blue Angel where the trio sang its take-off on Billie Sol Estes. The rumpus, it turned out, was caused by a Texan who had apparently gone over his ten-gallon limit and did not understand that the song was against, not for, Billie Sol Estes. (This sort of know-nothing misunderstanding reached its apogee in Ohio, where a young member of the John Birch Society told the trio that his branch used the trio's Birch song at all their meetings!)

After a Chicago disk jockey, Dan Sorkin, played the anti-Birch song on his show, he got an angry call: "Listen, fella, I'll have your job before morning." Sorkin replied: "Look, pal, you won't like it. You'll have to get up at 5 A.M."

Probably the most dramatic instances of controversy occurred in Chicago. The WBBM-TV "Repertoire Workshop" vetoed three of the group's satirical songs. Also in Chicago, an apparently drunk patron at the Drake Hotel got increasingly incensed at "Alma Mater" and the anti-Birch song. After his heckling, and when hotel officials did not intercede, Joe Frazier tried to reason with the outraged patron but only got punched for his trouble.

But for the most part, the 30 per cent of The Mitchell Trio's repertoire that deals with events of the day has endeared them to thousands of listeners. They seek their material from topical revues, musicals, and places far from the folk stream.
The trio has obviously given a great deal of thought to the use of this material and is anxious to spell out points of view. In a cover-story interview with Linda Solomon, editor of the ABC-TV Hootenanny Show Magazine, Chad Mitchell made the following points about topical material:

Q-I've heard criticism of The Chad Mitchell Trio to the extent that politics and entertainment don't mix; that people come to a club or concert to be entertained and not to be confronted with the troubles of the world.
Do you feel that your group is becoming too "message-y"?

A-Different people seem to be entertained by different things. For some, an hour of juggling and trained animal acts is a fine evening's entertainment. Others prefer an evening with Mort Sahl, Lenny Bruce, or Shelly Ber-man. The success of these performers seems to indicate that entertainment and socio-political themes do mix. It's simply a matter of taste as to what you prefer. As for becoming "message-y," satire has been a traditional art form for hundreds of years, and, by definition, ridicules a social or political point of view or event. We are simply following in the footsteps of the goliards of the Middle Ages, the Jonathan Swifts of the post-Restoration era, and the Julius Monks of the 1960's.

Chad made more telling points in an exchange of views with a reviewer for the Spokane Spokesman Review in February, 1964. This was the first time Chad had ever replied to a reviewer, but he felt impelled to offer clarification. The exchange is worth quoting at length because of how it illuminates the trio's approach:

TRIO EXTREMELY TALENTED BUT SOMEHOW DEPRESSING

In the light of their great talent as performers . . . The Chad Mitchell Trio are depressing. . . .

Most distressing is that the trio has developed and is apparently being directed by what its press agent calls its "social and political conscience."

In plainer terms, this means that the trio has found that by finding something at which to point ridicule (fun is one thing, ridicule another) they can find immediate favor with a certain type of person.

Time was when it was considered great fun to make sport of minorities. The game has been refined and "intellectualized" and people with a "social conscience" sing (or listen to) songs that give a clever, but cruel barb to new minorities.
Actually, there is no more cause to point the finger of scorn at a defunct political regime (Nazism) or the conservative John Birch Society or Billie Sol Estes than there was to hurling insults at Irish immigrants at the turn of the century. Is this progress?

Thus, a concert by three fine-looking, fine-sounding young men can have something lacking because of this rather commercial "conscience." Laughter at someone else's expense cannot be completely satisfying.

No humor is intended when they sing, for instance, Russian songs, spiritual songs, laments of one kind or another, stirring songs, or occasionally songs of love (though they steer a course away from sentimentality).

But always, whether they are digging for laughs or just singing for whatever pure joy there is for those who make a living at it, they are superb craftsmen, and good showmen. Their arrangements are top quality, wonderfully executed and their accompaniment, two musicians on banjo, mandolin and two guitars, exceptional. . . . E. C.

To this, Chad Mitchell replied:

Editor
Spokesman-Review
Spokane, Washington
Dear Sir:
Since the formation of The Chad Mitchell Trio if has been our policy never to answer newspaper criticism; we find it generally unprofessional. But after reading Mr. Ed Costello's review of our performance in Spokane on Jan. 22, we find that the gist of his remarks does not concern our artistry, but rather reflects his own impressions of the philosophy that has developed within our group. Unfortunately, Mr. Costello has misrepresented, that philosophy and has attributed to us qualities that are, in fact, most repugnant to us and that violate every principle toward which we have striven for the last five years. Mr. Costello so inaccurately represented this vital area. of our development that we are taking the liberty of writing you.

In his review, Mr. Costello states that The Chad Mitchell Trio has developed a "social and political conscience" and then implies that this conscience was developed for purely commercial reasons. We wonder how Mr. Costello came to this conclusion without first discussing with any of the trio members either their individual philosophy or the philosophy of the trio. We wonder, also, why he considers our concern with the social-political issues of today to be "distressing." He must realize that ours is one of the most socially-politically oriented societies in the history of mankind, and that familiarity with these aspects of it should be everyone's concern. Rather than becoming distressed or depressed by the "certain type of person" who appreciates this responsibility, we should think Mr. Costello would be uplifted by citizens showing an interest in their country; or does he equate ignorance and apathy with happiness?

As for our involvement in these areas, The Chad Mitchell Trio has always endeavored to express itself musically, philosophically and emotionally. We consider ourselves to be vitally interested in the welfare of our society and the world in which we live, and we feel that our music reflects that interest honestly. Folk music has traditionally reflected the feelings and events of a society and we feel that by performing our material we are following in that tradition. Should the expression of our era be represented by a void in the archives of folk music 100 years from now?

We are almost embarrassed to discuss Mr. Costello's equating of minority groups. How could anyone but the most socially and politically naive compare Irish immigrants, whose only aim was to become useful American citizens, with the graft and fraud surrounding Billie Sol Estes, the fanatical accusations of the John Birch Society, or the genocide committed under the Nazi regime? (Again Mr. Costello seems to have missed the point. Our satire on Naziism is directed at Neo-Naziism in Germany today rather than at the "defunct political regime" of the thirties and forties.) If left to mature, the ideas and morals of "minority groups" such as the last three mentioned could lead our country to ultimate decay or result in a totalitarianism of the Hitler or Stalin variety.

By continuing to ridicule organizations whose basic principles are antagonistic to those of democracy, we feel we are fulfilling our obligations to ourselves, our art, and our society.
Sincerely,
Chad Mitchell

Mike Kobluk is admittedly the most conservative member of the group. He takes a slightly different approach toward satirical material, defining his stand this way:

"Through satirical numbers like 'Lizzie Borden,' 'John Birch Society' and 'Twelve Days of Christmas,' we found that we could express ideas that we were all growing into, ideas that we felt were needed. But I do not consider myself as a member of a crusading group. We present ideas of many points of view. Above all, a song must be good . . . and tasteful. Obviously, we won't sing a song we don't all agree with, to one degree or another. I'm probably the most conservative one in the trio: Joe is the most oriented toward society, socially and politically; and Chad is somewhere between us."

Joe. Frazier does, indeed, have some strong views on this subject:

"I came into the group very politically oriented. I was brought up in a Republican area where my father and all our relatives were staunch Democrats. Politics has always been a very real thing for me and my family . . . it was a method of fighting, in an amicable way. The struggle was sort of apparent there in a steel mining town. So I was always very interested in politics, on a standard Democrat-Republican level.

"Then, in high school, I started to ask questions. I had a class in international relations, I remember, that stimulated me. I did a lot of reading. I got interested in a questioning kind of politics, with an independent view. Almost all adolescents have rebellious 'causes'; I think I was lucky enough to choose a good one. It has since been tempered. It's not just rebellion now . . . I don't think it's rebellion at all. But I still ask questions.

"Now, when I met the other members of the group, I found they weren't interested in politics at all. I couldn't understand this. Folk singers without any interest in the big issues of their times? Well, a lot has changed, of course, with the growth of the trio. We still have three separate approaches to every problem but, in general, there are basic things on which we have definite agreement. And this shows up in our selection of material.

"But we believe we're an entertainment group, not propagandists. We do many straight folk songs, religious songs, gospel songs . . . but we find the high points of our programs are those songs with social meaning. We-at least I- do them because I want to say something . . . not to educate, not to change people's minds or make them agree, but to stimulate them, to invite them to think.

"The entertainment is important. These songs give us validity. And I don't like the over-propagandistic songs which are only good for people who already agree with the viewpoint. I believe social-comment songs should be done artistically, subtly, or in a funny way. There is no better way to fight the John Birch Society than to make people laugh at them.
"We find, especially in college audiences, not just laughter, but an added response that seems to say: 'Yeah! You're saying something!' We've had good luck with night-club audiences, but it's the exuberance, the enthusiasm of college audiences that makes the difference. Part of it is the empathy, the identification, like they're saying: 'That could be me singing up there.'

"Their minds are more open now than they were in the fifties. It's exciting to me. The most exciting part of college concerts is going to fraternity parties or college hangouts afterward. They'll start asking questions. And we talk. And when they get excited, I get excited. If I made a speech saying basically what the songs say, they wouldn't be nearly as receptive. But I don't believe we should overbalance our programs . . . I hope we're never known as just political singers . . . the Mort Sahls of folk music. We sing a lot of just pretty things with no particular meaning."

There is a lot of thought behind what The Mitchell Trio sings, says, and does. There is "no particular meaning" in many of their traditional songs-only the meaning of beauty, of trying to show the method of expression of "the little people" around the world. No propaganda, except for the implied partisanship the trio feels for the disfranchised, the oppressed, and the guy who gets pushed around.

The Mitchell Trio, with the behind-the-scenes support of Milt Okun, is a product of a generation that is committing itself to social concern, a generation that is tired of wars and discrimination and packaged culture. This generation has taken to The Mitchell Trio and identified with it because, as Joe Frazier puts it, "That could be me singing up there."


Last revised: February 23, 2006.