The Very Best of the Chad Mitchell

Apparently lacking enough tracks to make up a full-fledged Live at Newport album on the Chad Mitchell Trio from its archives as it has with other artists recently, Vanguard opted to license four tracks from the Trio's early years and five from their later years to go with the five tracks they have from Newport. The result doesn't quite live up to the somewhat misleading title. True, this collection includes such Trio favorites as "Lizzie Borden" and "The John Birch Society," but the Newport material, while entertaining, hardly fits into the "very best of" category. And the rest of the disc consists of songs that, while familiar ("Four Strong Winds," "Get Together," "Last Thing On My Mind"), are not known for the Trio's versions. Some of them, by the way, are not technically by the Chad Mitchell Trio, since they date from after the point when Chad Mitchell left the group and was replaced by John Denver in what was called "The Mitchell Trio." No reason for anyone to complain about Denver's performances, of course, but that's another example of the truth-in-packaging problems presented here. ~ William Ruhlmann