The Best of the Chad Mitchell Trio: The Mercury Years

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Customer reviews

review by: date: 2004-06-24 rating:
A solid compliation of the Chad Mitchell Trio's later years
The Chad Mitchell Trio began recording with Mercury Records in 1963, after releasing their first four albums on Kapp Records (the best of which was their live album, "The Chad Mitchell Trio at the Bitter End"). The group recorded six albums for Mercury, the last two of which saw Chad Mitchell leaving the group and being replaced by a young John Denver (Mike Kobluk and Joe Frazier were the other members). As folk singers the Chad Mitchell Trio was a notch below the Kingston Trio and Peter, Paul Mary, which is still pretty good. Besides, these guys covered "Blowin' in the Wind" first; the problem was their label delayed releasing it and PPM beat them to the punch, which is why they jumped to Mercury. pThis collection features 27 tracks, including songs written by Tom Paxton ("The Marvelous Toy") Phil Ochs ("That's the Way It's Gonna Be"), and even Lennon McCartney ("She Loves You"). However, while they offer up the same sort of cheerful harmonies that characterized popular folk music in the Sixties, the Chad Mitchell Trio tended to more in the forefront of providing songs that were political and/or satirical in nature. "Barry's Boys" is about 1964 Republican Presidential nominee Barry Goldwater, "Alma Mater" is about the integration of college campuses, while "Your Friendly Liberal Neighborhood Ku Klux Klan" and "The Draft Dodger Rag" need no further explanation. Only seven of these tracks feature John Denver, but he wrote three of the songs, including "For Bobbi." pMy own quibble with the selections is that it does not include the group's cover of "Mr. Tambourine Man," on which Denver sang the lead (how can you pass up the one example out there of "Denver does Dylan"?). For the first half of the music career of the Chad Mitchell Trio there is a Knapp collection from 1963 called "The Best of the Chad Mitchell Trio," while this album, "The Best of the Chad Mitchell Trio: The Mercury Years" more than adequately covers the second half.

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