Cass Elliot

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Cass Elliot
Background information
Birth name	Ellen Naomi Cohen
Also known as	Mama Cass
Born	September 19, 1941, Baltimore, Maryland
Died	July 29, 1974, London aged 32
Genre(s)	Pop music Folk rock
Occupation(s)	singer
Instrument(s)	voice
Years active	1963-74
Associated acts	The Mamas and the Papas

Cass Elliot (September 19, 1941 – July 29, 1974), born Ellen Naomi Cohen, was a noted American singer, best remembered as Mama Cass of the pop quartet The Mamas & the Papas. After the group broke up, she had a successful solo career, releasing nine albums. Elliot was found dead in her hotel room in London from an apparent heart attack after two sold-out performances at the Palladium.

Early life and career

Ellen Cohen was born in Baltimore, Maryland, and grew up there and in Alexandria, Virginia (a suburb of Washington, DC). She adopted the name "Cass" in high school -- possibly, as Denny Doherty tells it, borrowing it from the actress Peggy Cass -- but in any case, it was just 'Cass,' not 'Cassandra.' She assumed the surname Elliot sometime later, in memory of a friend who had died.

She started her acting career with a part in the play The Boy Friend while she was still in school. After leaving school, she went to New York City, where she appeared in The Music Man but lost the part of Miss Marmelstein in I Can Get It for You Wholesale to Barbra Streisand in 1962.

While working as a hat check girl at "The Showplace" in Greenwich Village, Elliot would sometimes sing, but it wasn't until she returned to the Washington area, to attend American University, that she began to pursue a singing career. As America's folk music scene was on the rise, Elliot met banjoist and singer Tim Rose and singer John Brown, and the three began performing as The Triumvirate. In 1963, James Hendricks replaced Brown and the trio was renamed The Big Three. Elliot's first recording, Winkin', Blinkin' and Nod, with The Big Three, was released by FM Records in 1963.

When Tim Rose left The Big Three in 1964, Elliot and Hendricks teamed up with Canadians Zal Yanovsky and Denny Doherty as The Mugwumps. This group lasted eight months, after which Cass performed as a solo act for a while. Yanovsky joined with John Sebastian to co-found The Lovin' Spoonful while Doherty joined The New Journeymen with John Phillips and his wife, Michelle. In 1965, Doherty finally convinced Phillips that Cass should join the group. She did so, officially, while they were vacationing in the Virgin Islands. In August 1968, Abigail Folger and Wojciech Frykowski moved across the street from Cass, and the couple quickly became friends with her. They also became good friends with Cass's bandmate Michelle Phillips. Just one year later, Folger and Frykowski became two of the victims in the Charles Manson-Sharon Tate murders.

The Mamas and the Papas

From left to right: Denny Doherty, Cass Elliot, and John and Michelle Phillips.

Now that The New Journeymen had two female members, it needed a new name. According to Doherty, Elliot had the inspiration for the band's new name. Doherty writes on his website:

Doherty went on to say that the occasion marked the beginning of his affair with Michelle. Elliot was in love with Doherty (though married platonically to Jim Hendricks at the time), so was displeased when he told her about the affair.

Elliot, known for her sense of humor and optimism, was considered by some to be the most charismatic member of the group. Her warm, distinctive voice was a large factor in their success. She is best remembered for her vocals on the group's Billboard hits California Dreamin', Monday Monday, and Words of Love, and particularly for the solo Dream a Little Dream of Me, which the group recorded in 1968 after learning about the death of Fabian Andre, one of the men who co-wrote it, whom Michelle Phillips had met years earlier. Elliot's version is noteworthy for being a ballad, whereas all earlier recordings of "Dream a Little Dream of Me" (including one by Nat King Cole) had been quick, up tempo versions — the song having actually been written in 1931 as a dance tune for the nightclubs of the day.

The Mamas and the Papas soldiered on for two more years, finally disbanding in July 1968. They continued to record, however, to meet the terms of their record contract until their final album was released in 1971. Elliot's voice is noticeably weak on that album, as she herself was physically weak from crash dieting.

Solo career

After the breakup of The Mamas & the Papas, Elliot went on to have a successful solo singing career. Her most successful recording during this period was 1968's Dream a Little Dream of Me from her solo album of the same name, released by Dunhill Records though it had originally been recorded for and released on the album The Papas & the Mamas Presented By The Mamas and the Papas earlier that year. She headlined briefly in Las Vegas for the unusually lucrative pay of USD$40,000 per week.

She was a regular on TV talk shows and variety shows in the 1970s, including The Julie Andrews Hour, The Mike Douglas Show, The Andy Williams Show, Hollywood Squares, and The Carol Burnett Show. She guest-hosted for Johnny Carson on The Tonight Show and appeared on that show 13 other times. Elliot also was a guest panelist for a week in late 1973 on the hit game show Match Game '73. She appeared in the 1973 Saga of Sonora, a TV music-comedy-Western special with stars of the day such as Jill St. John, Vince Edwards, Zero Mostel, and Lesley Ann Warren.

Throughout the early 1970s, Elliot continued her acting career as well. She had a featured role in the 1970 movie Pufnstuf and made guest-star acting appearances on TV's The New Scooby-Doo Movies, Young Dr. Kildare, Love, American Style, and The Red Skelton Show, among others.

Family and death

Apart from her time with Denny Doherty, Cass was married twice. The first marriage, to bandmate Jim Hendricks, began in 1963. This was reportedly a purely platonic arrangement, however, to assist him in avoiding being drafted into the army during the Vietnam War. The marriage reportedly was never consummated and was annulled in 1968. In 1971, Elliot became the Baroness von Wiedenman, when she married journalist Donald von Wiedenman, heir to a Bavarian barony^{[2] [3]} That marriage ended in divorce after a few months.

Elliot gave birth to a daughter, Owen Vanessa Elliott, on April 26, 1967. She never publicly identified the father, but many years later, Michelle Phillips helped Owen locate her biological father. Owen grew up to become a singer as well.

At the height of her solo career in 1974, Elliot performed two sold-out concerts at the London Palladium. She telephoned Michelle Phillips after the final concert, utterly elated that she had received standing ovations each night. She then retired for the evening, and died in her sleep of a heart attack. ^[4]The New York Times reported, "Dr. Keith Simpson, a British pathologist, and Gavin Thurston, a London coroner, issued a report yesterday that ruled out the theory that "Mama" Cass Elliot choked to death on a ham sandwich." ^[5] Standing 5 feet, 5 inches tall, she had weighed as much as 300 pounds since high school. The excess weight combined with numerous attempts to reduce her size with extreme crash dieting put a great strain on her heart, until it finally gave out.

At Elliot's death, her sister, Leah Kunkel, received custody of Cass' daughter Owen, then just seven years old. Kunkel is also a singer and charted in 1984 as a member of the Coyote Sisters on the single "Straight From The Heart (Into Your Life)." Kunkel was interviewed by VH1 in 1997 and discussed her famous sister for the "Mamas & Papas" episode of the network's documentary series Behind The Music.

Urban legends

An urban legend arose that Elliot died choking on a ham sandwich. This is incorrect. Speaking to the press shortly after her body was discovered, the police noted that a partly eaten sandwich had been found in her room and speculated that she may have choked while eating it. When the coroner's autopsy was performed, no food was found in her trachea and the cause of death was determined to have been heart failure and that she had died in her sleep. But by then, the specious Fatal Ham Sandwich story was already making the rounds and the real cause of death was ignored by press and public.^[6] The story has fueled countless jokes over the years since her death, an especially tasteless one being that if Mama Cass had given Karen Carpenter (who later died of anorexia) her ham sandwich, both would still be alive.

Another popular legend about Elliot is that her vocal range was improved by three notes after she was hit on the head by some copper tubing shortly before joining the group, while they were in the Virgin Islands. Elliot herself confirmed the story; in an interview with Rolling Stone magazine in 1968 she said,

But according to John Phillips, he invented the claim that it caused her voice to change, as a justification for agreeing to let her into the band after initially refusing to allow her to join. The 2005 PBS special California Dreamin': The Songs of the Mamas and the Papas includes a segment with John, filmed in 1986, explaining this.

References to Cass Elliot in media

Since her death, Mama Cass in general, and specifically the false legend surrounding the cause of her death, have been the butt of jokes in comedy routines, movies, and songs, by performers such as Frank Zappa, Adam Sandler, Denis Leary, Mike Myers, TISM, Jack Black, "Weird Al" Yankovic, and others.

Other media have featured her music or referred to her in a more positive light, such as:

• Her recording of "Make Your Own Kind of Music" is prominently featured in three episodes of the television series Lost — Man of Science, Man of Faith, Adrift, and Flashes Before Your Eyes — along with a sitar arrangement of the song in Live Together, Die Alone".
• In the British film Beautiful Thing one of the supporting characters is obsessed with Elliot. Of the 16 tracks on the soundtrack album, 15 are songs by either Cass Elliot or The Mamas & the Papas.
• Cass Elliot is one of the names mentioned by Alan Freed as an upcoming act in Stephen King's You Know They Got a Hell of a Band, a short story revolving around a town inhabited by late music legends who perform a concert every night. This story is part of King's Nightmares and Dreamscapes book.
• In Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery, Austin Powers refers to Mama Cass (his friend) as being deceased because of a ham sandwich.
• The Crosby, Stills & Nash Greatest Hits album released in 2005 was dedicated to Cass Elliot
• The song "Mama, I Remember You Now" by the swedish artist Marit Bergman is a tribute to Mama Cass.
• The ham sandwich myth was discussed on an episode of "TV Land's Myths and Legends"
• The TISM song "He'll Never Be an Ol' Man River," about River Phoenix's death but mentioning others as well, includes the lyric "Mama Cass's sandwhich, I ate the same"
• A recording of Dream a Little Dream of Me in French (sung by Elliot) can be heard in the movie The Devil Wears Prada. It is in a scene where Anne Hathaway is at a restaraunt with Christian Thompson (played by Simon Baker)

Solo discography

Albums

• 1968: Dream a Little Dream - US #87
• 1969: Bubblegum, Lemonade, And... Something for Mama - US #91
• 1969: Make Your Own Kind of Music - US #169 (a reissue of Bubblegum, Lemonade... with the hit title song added)
• 1971: Mama's Big Ones (solo greatest hits) - US #194
• 1971: Dave Mason and Mama Cass - US #49
• 1972: The Road Is No Place for a Lady
• 1973: Don't Call Me Mama Anymore

Singles

• 1968: "Dream a Little Dream of Me" (Mama Cass with the Mamas & the Papas) - US #12 Pop/#2 AC, UK #11
• 1968: "California Earthquake" - US #67
• 1969: "Move in a Little Closer, Baby" - US #58 Pop/#32 AC
• 1969: "It's Getting Better" - US #30 Pop/#13 AC, UK #8
• 1969: "Make Your Own Kind of Music" - US #36 Pop/#6 AC
• 1970: "New World Coming" - US #42 Pop/#4 AC
• 1970: "A Song That Never Comes" - US #99 Pop/#25 AC
• 1970: "The Good Times Are Coming" - US #104 Pop/#19 AC
• 1970: "Don't Let the Good Life Pass You By" - US #110 Pop/#34 AC

References

External links

• Tribute and biography of Elliot
• The true origin of the "hit on the head with a pipe" myth
• Snopes report on the ham sandwich myth
• Image of Cass Elliot's death certificate
• Review of Cass' music
• Cass Elliot at the Internet Movie Database

1. A Valentine Mom
2. She's been expecting you
3. You'll Put Your Eye Out!
4. Flowers 4 Mom
5. A Random Mother
6. NOT Mama Cass's Last Meal
7. Alma Mater
8. A Stroll Down Memory Lane
9. The Old Jewish Mother
10. What Mothers Won't Do
11. In Any Language!
12. Mother May Eye
13. This started it all............
14. What didya say 'bout My Momma?
15. Cache Mommy
16. Your Mother Wears Water Wings-aka V2M SuppleMENTAL