Richard Campbell is an unlikely gatekeeper, and he knows it.

“In the pie of my life, this is a fairly small [slice] but it’s one that garners the most attention because people feel like it’s so incongruous,” the Richmond Circuit Court judge says.

Campbell is the author of “Gettin’ Kinda Itchie,” an absorbing new book on the early days of the Mamas and the Papas, icons of the hippy-dippy ’60s. The book is a well written, thoroughly researched account of the early music careers of band members John Phillips, his then wife Michelle Phillips, “Mama” Cass Elliot and Denny Doherty – a rich and complicated tale that is no less than the origin story of American folk rock.

By all accounts, the writer is – to quote one particular Mamas and Papas tune –a “straight shooter.” By day, he’s a judge, a conservative family man with three daughters who has never smoked pot, dropped acid or participated in a Love-In. But, as more than one documentary has noted, Campbell is the “Mamas and the Papas historian.” Somehow this unassuming and conservative Richmond jurist has become the quasi-official archivist of one of rock music’s most iconic and free-lovin’ singing groups.

“The harmony and the perfection of their music is such that it really transcends its time, and transcends the milieu in which the members lived,” says Campbell, 56. “It’s a very concentrated, discrete canon. They weren’t together that long, starting in late ’65 and really done by late ’67, even though they released their last album in ’68.”

In the early days of the internet, Campbell published a web page devoted to Cass Elliot, the group’s outsized co-lead vocalist who passed away in 1974. The page got noticed. Since then, Campbell has written more than 25 sets of liner notes for the band’s CDs, box sets and group-related solo reissues, as well as extensive liners for reissues of bands that once featured its members, like the Journeymen, the Halifax Three, the Big 3 and the Mugwumps, the latter considered by some the very first proper “folk rock” band.

The book “Gettin’ Kinda Itchie” is the result of Campbell’s decades of interviews, research and collecting, plus a host of additional discoveries made researching the book, and it all began at Plan 9 Music in 1983. “I bought a lot of the Mamas and the Papas records there at once, and about the same time, I got a record by a group called the Big 3, which is one of Cass Elliot’s groups before the Mamas and Papas.” Something clicked. “I don’t know if it was the sound of the music or the fact that I immersed myself in all these albums at once, but I was hooked.”

Growing up, Campbell says that he was a fan of harmony singing and mainly listened to what his parents Barton and Madge put on at home – Broadway show tunes, classical music, some Nat King Cole. He took piano lessons when he was young but never took to playing music himself. While he admits to following contemporary popular music as a young adult, citing everything from R.E.M. to Richmond’s own Good Guys, it never went beyond a casual fandom.

Instead he chased the bar, attending University of Richmond law school and eventually working in the offices of the Virginia Attorney General, mostly under Republican administrations, as well as the offices of the United States Attorney and the Commonwealth’s Attorney. “I was enjoying a great career in the Attorney General’s office when a number of people approached me about going on the bench. So I ended up on the juvenile bench for 16 years before going on the circuit court. It’s been a great honor to serve this way, but it wasn’t anything I saw coming when I first started out.”

Neither was his role as “the Mamas and Papas historian.” When Campbell began writing M&P liner notes for record labels like Varese-Sarabande and MCA/Universal, he became friends with Owen Elliot-Kugell, the daughter of the late Cass Elliot. Through her, he came to know Denny Doherty, the M&Ps’ other co-lead vocalist (a man Michelle Phillips once referred to “the psychedelic Frank Sinatra”). “I helped Denny in a consulting way with his one-man Broadway show about the group,” Campbell remembers. “And Michelle and I have now been friends for 30 years.” While the judge never met songwriter and bandleader, John Phillips, who died in 2001, he did talk with him on the phone and has become close with his children Mackenzie [of “One Day at a Time” TV fame], Chynna and Jeffrey.

As the resident genealogist in his own family, Campbell says he’s always been interested in “the roots of the trees and how they connect.” Through his liner notes, Campbell gained a reputation for dogged research. After a time, when reporters or authors would contact members of the group with questions about their history, the answer would be, “call Richard.” Campbell laughs: “I was the master of the Rolodex, which prompted Michelle to call me ‘the keeper of the flame.'”

A band with roots in Virginia

While much has been written about the storied quartet, from their number #1 hits, “Monday, Monday” and “California Dreaming,” to their efforts in launching the Monterey Pop Festival, to their notorious, (sex and drug-filled) group dynamics, the story usually begins in 1966, when the group members began releasing records as the Mamas and the Papas. “But the story I’m telling here, from the late-’50s to 1965, has really never been told,” Campbell says. “It’s very important, I think, and it’s not been talked about nearly as much as the soap opera of their [later] life.” He admits that his focus on this more innocent era of the band’s life avoids telling the later dark side of the story, in particular the drug rap sheet and abuse allegations that later surrounded Phillips. “That’s already been covered,” he says.

One of the major takeaways of the book is how rooted the members of the group were in Virginia, not California. John and Cass were both from Northern Virginia and at different times attended George Washington High School in Alexandria (other famous students were Phil Blondheim, aka Scott McKenzie, and the Doors’ Jim Morrison). Cambpell says, “In one interview, Mama Cass said that she considered herself as being from Virginia … ‘from the Tide-water.'”

Phillips, who briefly (and disastrously) attended Hampden-Sydney College, was enamored with harmony singing, Campbell says. “John was very drawn, much like Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys, to the Hi-Los, the Four Freshmen, and the Modernaires. He loved the sound of voices blending and especially men and women singing together.”

The lanky guitarist formed a series of bands starting in 1958: The Abstracts, the Smoothies (who were signed to Decca and even performed on “American Bandstand”) and, finally, the Journeymen, who were part of the early 1960s folk craze. These early groups included longtime collaborator Phil Blondheim, who would go to the top of the charts in 1967 as “Scott McKenzie” with the Phillips-penned “San Francisco (Be Sure To Wear Flowers in Your Hair”). “The Journeymen were regarded as the next Kingston Trio and played a lot around here so if you went to University of Richmond, VCU, then RPI, or William and Mary … you might’ve seen them.”

The Journeymen disbanded in 1964 but Phillips quickly formed the New Journeymen with his new wife, Michelle, and a fellow named Marshall Brickman, who would later cowrite the movie “Annie Hall” with Woody Allen, and pen the Broadway megahit, “Jersey Boys.” (Brickman has praised Campbell’s book as being like “taking a trip to the folk rock version of the Louvre”). When he stepped aside, Canadian Denny Doherty joined, fresh from teaming with Cass Elliot in the short-lived Mugwumps. “Here, in the New Journeymen, you had John, Michelle and Denny together … it’s almost the Mamas and the Papas.”

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In his research for “Gettin’ Kinda Itchie” – the title comes from the band’s autobiographical song, “Creeque Alley” – Campbell discovered previously unknown compositions by Philips (as well as Mama Cass) at the Library of Congress, excavated a previously unknown Journeymen recording, and found a passel of unpublished and little-seen photos, mostly culled from universities where the groups performed. He also discovered an undocumented band that Doherty and Zal Yavolsky (who would eventually co-found the Lovin’ Spoonful) had been in together before they joined the Mugwumps.

The book begs for a comprehensive reissue CD, which Campbell says would be hard to do because of licensing (he and Varese-Sarabande compiled a 1999 disc called “Before they Were the Mamas and the Papas: The Magic Circle,” but couldn’t secure Journeymen cuts from Capitol Records). Instead, the author has created a YouTube channel and a Spotify mix with much of the rare early material so that readers can listen to the music as they absorb the story.

With the book, the author dispels some rumors and commonly-referenced “facts,” like the idea that Michelle Phillips, the last surviving member, wasn’t up to the task of singing with the rest. “Actually, Michelle studied the cello and she was the only one who could read music. She had the ability to sing but the blend of Cass’ and Denny’s voices were so strong, it would get buried.”

For now, the judge is learning how to be a book author. He’s preparing to be a guest on various music podcasts and is working on arranging book-signing events. He has his first one at Westminster Canterbury on Oct. 10. “I’ll sign some books, give a presentation, and play some of the music,” he says, still a diehard fan after 40 years. “There really isn’t anything like it in rock ‘n’ roll.”

Richard Campbell will speak at Westminster Canterbury, 1600 Westbrook Ave., on Oct. 10 at 2 p.m. The event is free. For more on “Gettin’ Kinda Itchie: The Groups That Made The Mamas and The Papas,” go to gettinkindaitchie.com.