I remember when one person quit the CMT, and the person who quit was none other than ... Chad Mitchell!

I found the whole idea a bit perplexing, and wasn't sure what to make of this new guy, John Denver, who stepped in as the replacement, while Chad "Himself" was starting a solo career. I have a vague memory of seeing the group live right at the time of this change, probably at a festival or some kind of concert featuring multiple acts, and being surprised that they had a new member in the lead-singer spot.

This was around the time that, rightly or wrongly, I was tuning out of the "commercial" folk music group-vocal genre in favor of my newly developing interest in more hard-core, less-generally-accessible, folk forms, especially the older generation of bluesmen who were being "redicovered." So I did not follow the "new" CMT (without CM) very closely, but I did know who John Denver was when he launched his own career under his own name.

Incidentally, the estimable Mr. McGuinn, who was a backing musician on many folk and folk-oid recordings before founding the Byrds and finding stardom, was originally named "Jim" and only later became "Roger." I remember reading that the name change had something to do with McG's emerging interest in Eastern mysticism, and could never figure out what the name "Roger" had to do with Buddhism or any other East-Asian spiritual traditions. It's not like he changed his name to "Ram Dass" or anything exotic like that, even anything authentically Asian ~ can anyone explain?