MySQL transfer ISO-8859-1 to UTF-8

I'm not certain. I tried to start out be reproducing your problem but the alter worked fine for me.

test > CREATE TABLE `bar` (  `content` text ) ENGINE=MyISAM DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1;  INSERT INTO bar VALUES (0x8081828384858687898A8B8C8D8E8F909192939495969798999A9B9C9D9E9F);
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.02 sec)

Query OK, 1 row affected (0.00 sec)

test > ALTER TABLE bar CHANGE content content TEXT CHARACTER SET UTF8;
Query OK, 1 row affected (0.04 sec)
Records: 1  Duplicates: 0  Warnings: 0

test > select * from bar;
+---------------------------------+
| content                         |
+---------------------------------+
| ����������������������������� |
+---------------------------------+
1 row in set (0.00 sec)

test > set names utf8;
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec)

test > select * from bar;
+---------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| content                                                                         |
+---------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| €‚ƒ„…†‡‰Š‹ŒŽ‘’“”•–—˜™š›œžŸ |
+---------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
1 row in set (0.00 sec)

Here's my related char settings

test > show variables like '%char%';
+--------------------------+----------------------------+
| Variable_name            | Value                      |
+--------------------------+----------------------------+
| character_set_client     | utf8                       |
| character_set_connection | utf8                       |
| character_set_database   | latin1                     |
| character_set_filesystem | binary                     |
| character_set_results    | utf8                       |
| character_set_server     | latin1                     |
| character_set_system     | utf8                       |
| character_sets_dir       | /usr/share/mysql/charsets/ |
+--------------------------+----------------------------+

Edit

My char settings before running set names utf8

test > show variables like '%char%';
+--------------------------+----------------------------+
| Variable_name            | Value                      |
+--------------------------+----------------------------+
| character_set_client     | latin1                     |
| character_set_connection | latin1                     |
| character_set_database   | latin1                     |
| character_set_filesystem | binary                     |
| character_set_results    | latin1                     |
| character_set_server     | latin1                     |
| character_set_system     | utf8                       |
| character_sets_dir       | /usr/share/mysql/charsets/ |
+--------------------------+----------------------------+
8 rows in set (0.00 sec)

Version

test > select version();
+-------------------------+
| version()               |
+-------------------------+
| 5.1.41-3ubuntu12.10-log |
+-------------------------+
1 row in set (0.00 sec)

The solution isn't precisely the same but this question is where I originally found direction for a similar issue and the concepts there should take you where you want to go. MySQL has a BINARY character set and from all appearances, by converting through it, you can prevent MySQL from realizing what you're actually doing and being "too helpful."

Test case with character_set_client = utf8:

mysql> select CONVERT(CONVERT(CONVERT('Mike’s' USING latin1) USING binary) USING utf8);
+--------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| CONVERT(CONVERT(CONVERT('Mike’s' USING latin1) USING binary) USING utf8)     |
+--------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Mike’s                                                                         |
+--------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
1 row in set (0.00 sec)

You could use that logic to populate a new column that MySQL believes to be utf8.