THE CHAD MITCHELL TRIO

I am forever indebted to Joan Katz-Wurtzel who lent me At The Bitter End and Reflecting on vinyl when I was 15. I taped the albums, 'cause at the time they still hadn't been rereleased on CD. Joan did a lot of contributing towards the formation of my career as a folkie and a filker thought she probably doesn't know it. Joan are you out there?

The music on these two albums was a huge influence on me. It's part of the reason that I have a guitar named James James Morrison Morrison Weatherby George Dupree Taylor. That and that I'm an A. A. Milne fan from way back. Still, this was a huge influence. Songs like Last Night I Had The Strangest Dream, Hello Susan Brown, The Golden Vanity, Blues Around My Head, Banks of Sicily, Alberta, Queen Elanor's Confession, and others were my almost constant soundtrack through the last two years of high school. Outside of show tunes, the only other music I listened to that often in those years were Phil Ochs, and the Kingston Trio. Oh, and Herman's Hermits. I'd already been exposed to the Indigo Girls, and I had a strong grounding in Bob Dylan, Don McLean, and the Beatles but the Chad Mitchell Trio was my first foray into the early New York folk world.

Of course, I had no idea until years later just how much of their material was traditional, and how much of the remaining stuff was Tom Paxton's. I got to see Tom Paxton at Falcon Ridge this year. It's amazing how much of the music I grew up listening to is his. The trio did well to pick him as their primary source.

There's a good Chad Mitchell discography here.

For albums in print, look here.

And here's Christine Lavin's report on the Chad Mitchell concert I went to in 1996. Christine was the main act, and Josh White Jr. was on first, but I really went to see the Trio. Of course, Christine was great too, baton twirling and all. One of these days I might build a Christine Lavin page, you never know.