Lu Mitchell: Celebrated Folk Singer and Songwriter (1923–2019)

Lu Mitchell, folk singer and songwriter, was born Lucille Elizabeth Reiser in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, on December 26, 1923. She was the daughter of Anthony J. Reiser, a Hungarian immigrant who worked as a crane operator for Bethlehem Steel Corporation, and Margaret A. (King) Reiser. She graduated from Bethlehem Catholic High School and attended a business college but soon went to work in a secretarial job. While she was working in the accounting department at Bethlehem Steel, she auditioned at the Civic Theatre in nearby Allentown, Pennsylvania. There she met  Eugene Woodrow Mitchell, a director at the theater. He was also employed in the plant office at Bethlehem Steel. Lucille Elizabeth Reiser married Eugene Mitchell on May 25, 1946. She continued to act in plays directed by her husband at the Civic Theatre and played the leading role in the comedy Skylark in November 1946. The couple had a son, Sean.

The family moved to Dallas, Texas, in 1949, and the 1950 census recorded Eugene Mitchell as a salesman in a clothing store, and Lu was a homemaker caring for their two-year-old son. She eventually secured employment as a secretary for the Eastman Kodak Company, where she worked for twenty-nine years, and she returned to school in the 1970s and received an associate degree from Richland College of the Dallas County Community College District. Her husband was later business manager of the Dallas Museum of Fine Arts.

During the mid-1950s Lu Mitchell met Dallas folk singer and folklorist Hermes Nye, a Chicago native and lawyer who also recorded folk music with the label Folkways. Recalling her love of singing and the singalongs she attended at Girl Scout camp during her youth, Mitchell was attracted to the growing folk scene in the city. Nye accompanied Mitchell when she bought her first guitar, and he became her musical mentor. The two were part of a folk music revival in Texas. Having taught herself to play the guitar, and with Nye as her mentor, Mitchell started performing at the Rubaiyat, Dallas’s first coffeehouse music venue, and by the early 1960s she secured her own bookings at various clubs. During her early career, her repertoire included protest songs and traditional ballads, but she soon found her own niche in writing her own songs to, as the liner notes of one of her albums later commented, “poke good-natured fun at contemporary society.” Her satire covered a wide range of societal topics, including sexual harassment, medicine, television evangelists, and airport security. In 1963 Mitchell released 11 By Lu, an album she wrote with her husband. The collection included such songs as “Fallout Shelter Song” and “Dallas Transit Lament.” They followed that release with Sing In With Lu (1966) that included more satirical numbers such as “Chant of the Rat Race,” and “They’re Moving Father’s Grave to Build a Freeway.”

From the mid-1960s through the 1980s, Lu Mitchell and her husband, Eugene, also produced and lent their musical services at the First Unitarian Church in Dallas. This led to Mitchell being called on by other ministries to play so she could help make services relatable to the younger congregates. She worked with campus ministries and performed at various Texas universities. In addition to playing on college campuses, she played at various folk festivals across the United States and, with her band Catch-23, performed a number of shows at Musikfest in her hometown of Bethlehem. In Dallas she made frequent appearances at Poor David’s Pub, Uncle Calvin’s Coffeehouse, and Pocket Sandwich Theatre. Mitchell was the winner of the Kerrville Folk Festival New Folk competition and the Mesquite Folk Festival Rising Stars songwriting contest. Her performances included engagements with such musical luminaries as Carolyn Hester, The Kingston Trio, John Prine, and Mance Lipscomb. When she retired from her employment in 1983, she devoted her time fully to her music.

She released a total of eleven albums from the 1960s to the early 2000s. Her 1986 release, Alarums and Excursions, included “Lewd and Loose in Lewisville,” which paid homage to the Texas International Pop Festival that took place at Dallas International Motor Speedway in 1969. Medical Mayhem (2003) included songs such as “The Mammogram” and “The Little Gown That Opens Down the Back.” She also published a book, Singing for Her Sanity (2001), that included more than fifty of her approximately 300 songs.

Lu Mitchell was noticed by critics during her years of playing. She received praise from music critic Grover Lewis, who later wrote for Rolling Stone, when he reviewed her in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. He wrote that Mitchell was a “banshee zonked on truth serum.” Another critic from the Dallas Observer described her as “the musical version of Molly Ivins.” In 2009 the Dallas Folk Music Society celebrated their fiftieth anniversary, and Mitchell, who had co-founded the society in 1959, received an award from legendary folk singer, Pete Seeger, to honor her accomplishments.

Lu Mitchell, after suffering a stroke, passed away in Dallas on March 25, 2019. She was ninety-five. She was survived by her son and two grandchildren. Her husband predeceased her in 1996.