Alive!

he last gasp of the Mitchell Trio is a surprisingly lively affair. Despite the fact that only Mike Kobluk was left of the original members, they sound very good on this live recording. You can easily detect the emergence of John Denver as the group's frontman, and one surmises that if the Mitchell Trio had stayed together this process would have continued to the point where it would have been John Denver and his backup singers. Still, there is enough interplay here to make it a legitimate band album. Unlike the original members of the band Denver was a gifted lyricist, and the first recording of his song "Leavin' On A Jet Plane" is a highlight of this recording. Kobluk, on the other hand, has no solo turns on this album and has been relegated to a background role. New member David Boise got his first and last solo turn on the old Appalachian ballad "Coal Tattoo" and held his own on the lovely harmonies of "Cindy's Cryin'". Based on that slim evidence he was an able performer with a fine voice, and his subsequent failure to ever make another record is somewhat mysterious. Most of the material on Alive! is political, and though it is naturally dated now it is still obvious how effective songs like "Adam's Rib" once were. (This is a relative thing, of course - political folk music had moved on by 1965, and The Fugs could draw a bigger crowd than the Mitchell Trio.) Alive! is a rarity now and was not widely promoted when it was new, since by the time it was released Kobluk had left the group. Denver and David Boise toured for a while as The Mitchell Trio with new member Mike Johnson, but after a short period they dropped the Mitchell name and called themselves Denver, Boise, and Johnson. ~ Richard Foss|