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Way back at the beginning of time when I was but a boy growing up in Duncan, Oklahoma, my parents bought an album by a group called the Chad Mitchell Trio. Music came on vinyl plates back then. The Chad Mitchell Trio album was filled with funny songs such as “The John Birch Society” (roots music for Tea Partyers) and “Lizzie Borden” (Lizzie Borden took an axe and gave her mother forty whacks), but the song that sent my sister and me careening off the walls, howling with glee, was “Super Skier.”
We charged down the hall, screaming, “It’s a bird, no, it’s a plane. It’s Super Skier!” Mom must have been tempted to frisbee Chad Mitchell out the front door.
“Super Skier” is the story of a guy with all the walk, talk, and snappy dress, but in reality he has never strapped on skis in his life. He’s the prime stud of après ski. In the song, someone forces him to actually ski and he suffers a crash for the ages.
Flash forward fifty years and I’m talking to my friend Larry Rieser, who has been a ski instructor since skis were made from hickory boards. I mentioned my youthful obsession with “Super Skier,” and Larry said—“I wrote that song.”
Naturally, I said, “No way.”
“My wife at the time and I wrote ‘Super Skier’ in Aspen’s Limelighter Lounge in 1958.”
Being the cynical, tech weenie I am, I hopped on my Droid, shouted “Super Skier” into the voice search, and there it was: “Super Skier” by Rieser/Rieser.
