On July 29, 1974, Mama Cass Elliot died.

[mahatmakanejeeves]

Cass Elliot


Elliot in February 1972

Born: Ellen Naomi Cohen, September 19, 1941, Baltimore, Maryland, U.S.
Died: July 29, 1974 (aged 32), Mayfair, London, England
Cause of death: Heart failure

Associated acts: The Mamas & the Papas, The Big 3, The Mugwumps
Website: http://casselliot.com

Ellen Naomi Cohen (September 19, 1941 – July 29, 1974), known professionally as Mama Cass and later on as Cass Elliot, was an American singer and voice actress. She was a member of the singing group the Mamas & the Papas. After the group broke up, Elliot released five solo albums. In 1998, she was posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame for her work with the Mamas & the Papas.

Early life

Ellen Naomi Cohen was born in Baltimore, Maryland, on September 19, 1941, the daughter of Philip (died 1962) and Bess Cohen (née Levine; 1915–1994). All four of her grandparents were Russian Jewish immigrants. Her family was subject to significant financial stresses and uncertainties during her childhood years. Her father, involved in several business ventures, ultimately succeeded through the development of a lunch wagon in Baltimore that provided meals to construction workers. Her mother was a trained nurse. Elliot had a brother, Joseph, and a younger sister, Leah, who also became a singer and recording artist. Elliot's early life was spent with her family in Alexandria, Virginia, before the family moved to Baltimore when Elliot was 15, and where they had briefly lived at the time of Elliot's birth.

Elliot adopted the name "Cass" in high school, possibly borrowing it from actress Peggy Cass, according to Denny Doherty. She assumed the surname "Elliot" some time later, in memory of a friend who had died. While in Alexandria, she attended George Washington High School. When Elliot's family returned to Baltimore, she attended Forest Park High School. While attending Forest Park High School, Elliot became interested in acting. She won a small part in the play The Boy Friend, a summer stock production at the Hilltop Theatre in Owings Mills, Maryland. She left high school shortly before graduation and moved to New York City to further her acting career ( as recounted in the lyrics to "Creeque Alley" ).

Early career

{snip}

A 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 while walking through a construction site behind the bar where the New Journeymen were playing in the Virgin Islands. Elliot confirmed the story in a 1968 interview with Rolling Stone, saying:

It's true, I did get hit on the head by a pipe that fell down and my range was increased by three notes. They were tearing this club apart in the islands, revamping it, putting in a dance floor. Workmen dropped a thin metal plumbing pipe and it hit me on the head and knocked me to the ground. I had a concussion and went to the hospital. I had a bad headache for about two weeks and all of a sudden I was singing higher. It's true. Honest to God.

Friends later said, though, that the pipe story was a less embarrassing explanation for why John Phillips had kept her out of the group for so long, because he considered her too fat.

The Mamas and the Papas

With two female members, the New Journeymen needed a new name. According to Doherty, Elliot had the inspiration for the band's new name; as written on his website:

We're all just lying around vegging out watching TV and discussing names for the group. The New Journeymen was not a handle that was going to hang on this outfit. John was pushing for the Magic Cyrcle. Eech, but none of us could come up with anything better, then we switch the channel and, hey, it's the Hells Angels on the Carson show ... And the first thing we hear is: "Now hold on there, Hoss. Some people call our women cheap, but we just call them our Mamas." Cass jumped up: "Yeah! I want to be a Mama." And Michelle is going: "We're the Mamas! We're the Mamas!" OK. I look at John. He's looking at me going: "The Papas?" Problem solved. A toast! To the Mamas and the Papas. Well, after many, many toasts, Cass and John are passed out."

Doherty also said that the occasion marked the beginning of his affair with Michelle Phillips. Elliot was in love with Doherty and was displeased when he told her of the affair. Doherty has said that Elliot once proposed to him, but that he was so stoned at the time that he could not even respond.

{snip}

Here's a whole bunch of background related to the Mamas & the Papas and other rock and roll artists who went through Alexandria, Virginia:

Tue Aug 16, 2016: Scott McKenzie

Philip Blondheim is his real name, and is this ever a long story. There used to be someone at the local history room of the Alexandria Library who was well-versed in this subject.

"Scott McKenzie" spent his high school years in Alexandria, Virginia. He lived a few blocks from where Jim Morrison lived. Although I know which block it is and what street it is, I'm not sure exactly which house it was where "Scott McKenzie" lived. No matter; I can look it up in an Alexandria city directory from the era. The library has them. He lived about halfway between where I live and where Sean Spicer lives.

Inside The LC: The Strange but Mostly True Story of Laurel Canyon and the Birth of the Hippie Generation Part XVIII

{snip}

According to Michelle, "Tamar put on perfect airs around my dad and when it became necessary she would sleep with him." Whatever works, I guess. That perhaps explains why, in early 1961, Gil didn't have a problem with allowing his underage daughter to move to San Francisco with the daughter of a violent pedophile. Soon enough, Tamar found herself in a relationship with Journeyman Scott McKenzie, and bandmate John Phillips began coming by Tamar and Michelle's room on a nightly basis.

It wasn't long before Michelle, still just seventeen, was romantically involved with twenty-six-year-old Phillips, despite the fact that John was still married to Adams, with whom he by then had two children, Laura MacKenzie Phillips having been born on November 10, 1959 in Alexandria. Father Gil, who had himself recently taken a sixteen-year-old bride (one of a string of six wives), still wasn't concerned. And it's probably safe to assume that Phillip's father, who had pursued his bride when she was just fifteen, wouldn't have been too concerned either.

In October 1962, a year or so after meeting Michelle, John curiously found himself in Jacksonville, Florida (alongside Naval Air Station Jacksonville and Naval Station Mayport) for "two weeks of rest and rehearsal" during the Cuban Missile Crisis. For a guy who "never felt comfortable with political advocacy," John seems to have had a keen interest in Cuban affairs. Two months later, on New Years Eve 1962, Holly Michelle Gilliam became John Phillip's second wife. She also joined his reconfigured band, as did Canadian Denny Doherty, who had formerly been with the Mugwumps alongside Cass Elliot. This new lineup was dubbed the New Journeymen.

The newly-formed trio promptly embarked on a curious Caribbean adventure, arriving first at St. Johns, where John has claimed that they "snorkeled on acid" for several weeks. They next ferried over to St. Thomas, where they set up camp at a dive beachfront boardinghouse known as Duffy's. Soon enough, Ellen Naomi Cohen, better known as Cass Elliot, showed up with John's nephew, who was a childhood friend of hers. Cass had been born in Baltimore but had grown up in Alexandria, where, like Phillips, she had attended George Washington High School.

A Homer's Odyssey

By David Montgomery
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, August 24, 2006

Every community that doesn't have a Mark Opsasnick needs to get one. He is a tall and obsessed man from Greenbelt who quietly rages against forgetting. What he rescues from collective amnesia are not the big things. One of his favorite phrases is: "miscellaneous and unknown." ... He's the guy to ask about, say, Patsy Cline's seminal gigs at the Dixie Pig in Prince George's County. Or James M. Cain hard-boiling his last novels in a house near College Park. Or the true story of the local "haunted boy" who inspired "The Exorcist."

{snip}

This morning Opsasnick is driving down a winding street in Alexandria. Anybody else would have seen just the tall oaks and blooming crape myrtles shading neat Tudors and Colonials. Opsasnick looks more deeply and sees something that isn't here anymore. ... "We're entering Morrison country," he says dramatically, like a tour guide to a secret landscape. "These are the streets he walked on, these are the fields he played on, the sidewalks he traveled to visit his friends." ... That would be Jim Morrison, lead singer of the Doors.

"There's his girlfriend's house where he went around back and threw pebbles up to her window to get her to come out," Opsasnick continues. "Here is the corner where he would hold court and act crazy. . . . I can almost visualize a teenage Morrison shuffling from his house." ... The house is a stone-fronted Cape Cod in the 300 block of Woodland Terrace. Opsasnick started with the relatively well-known fact that Morrison lived here from the middle of his sophomore year through graduation from George Washington High School in 1961. Then he gave his subject the full Opsasnick treatment: He investigated those 32 months as if they involved the birth of the nation or the fate of the Earth.

The resulting brand-new opus -- "The Lizard King Was Here: The Life and Times of Jim Morrison in Alexandria, Virginia" -- fits well with the other five volumes that make up the author's investigations: another encyclopedic search-and-rescue mission down offbeat byways of the local past.

Out of the Attic - Two Port City musicians with flowers in their hair

Alexandria Times, February 4, 2016

One of the iconic songs of the counterculture movement in the 1960s was sung by Alexandria’s Philip Blondheim. Better known as Scott McKenzie, Blondheim sang the vocals to “San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair),” written by fellow Alexandrian John Phillips.

Born in Jacksonville, Fla. in 1939, Blondheim and his family moved to Asheville, N.C., where his father died a few months after Philip’s second birthday. His mother moved to Washington, D.C. in early 1942 to find work in the war industries, but she initially couldn’t afford an apartment of her own, so Blondheim stayed with his grandmother and other family members until 1946, when he joined his mother in an Alexandria townhouse.

Blondheim and Phillips, who later on gained fame with The Mamas and the Papas, both grew up in Alexandria in the mid-1950s and attended George Washington High School. They sang in separate vocal groups in the mid-1950s and met at a party hosted by Phillips at his apartment on Ramsey Alley. The two formed part of a quartet called The Abstracts, modeled after vocal quartets like The Four Freshmen and the Four Preps.

Out of the Attic - From Del Ray to Monterey Pop Festival

Alexandria Times, February 11, 2016

At the center of Alexandria’s connection to rock and folk music fame was John Phillips. Born in South Carolina, John and his family lived in Del Ray for much of his childhood.

He attended George Washington High School, like Cass Elliot and Jim Morrison, graduating in 1953. He met and then married his high school sweetheart, Susie Adams, with whom he had two children, Jeffrey and Mackenzie, who later became famous in her own right.

Phillips and Adams lived in the Belle Haven area after high school, but John left his young family at their Fairfax County home to start a folk music group called the Journeymen in New York City. The new group included lifelong friend and collaborator Philip Bondheim Blondheim, later known as Scott McKenzie, also from Del Ray.

I disagree on that last post. Philip Blondheim (not Bondheim) lived in North Ridge, not Del Ray.

Mark Opsasnick

CAPITOL ROCK is a comprehensive cultural history of Washington, D.C. rock and roll. Focusing on the first twenty-five years (1951-1976) of rock music in the nation's capital, author Mark Opsasnick skillfully combines overviews of the city's flourishing....

Sat Jul 29, 2023: On this day, July 29, 1974, Mama Cass Elliot died.

Fri Jul 29, 2022: July 29, 1974 🕯

Mon Jul 29, 2019: Died, July 29, 1974, 45 years ago today: Cass Elliot

[mahatmakanejeeves]

1. Flashback: Cass Elliot Performs a Shimmery 'Dream a Little Dream of Me' in 1970

HOME | MUSIC| MUSIC NEWS | JULY 29, 2019 12:20PM ET

Flashback: Cass Elliot Performs a Shimmery ‘Dream a Little Dream of Me’ in 1970
See Mamas and the Papas singer perform the song that helped launch her solo career

By ANGIE MARTOCCIO

Forty-five years ago today, the world lost “Mama” Cass Elliot, member of the Mamas and the Papas and a pivotal figure in the 1960s California rock scene. She was found dead at the infamous 1 Curzon Place, a London apartment that Harry Nilsson had rented out to the star. (Four years later, Keith Moon would die in the same apartment, also at 32 years old.)

Contrary to a nasty urban legend, Elliot did not die from choking on a ham sandwich, which London celebrity doctor Anthony Greenburgh originally told the Daily Express. “She appeared to have been eating a ham sandwich and drinking Coca Cola while laying down,” he reported. “A very dangerous thing to do.” Later, Coroner Gavin Thurston would reveal that the sandwich was not the cause — as it had been untouched — and Elliot had actually died of a heart attack. However, nearly half a century later, the myth persists.

Elliot had been in London performing a two week-stint at the London Palladium, with sets that included “Dream a Little Dream of Me,” a 1931 standard that she originally recorded with the Mamas and the Papas in 1968. Though there are more than 60 versions of the song, including one by Ella Fitzgerald, it quickly became Elliot’s signature tune. “I tried to sing it like it was 1943,” she told Melody Maker. “I tried to sing it as if it were the first time.”

The single came out in June 1968, credited to “Mama Cass with the Mamas and the Papas,” angering the band, who had already been dealing with inner turmoil for some time. In addition, the single featured a controversial poster of Elliot lying nude covered in daisies. “At that point nothing really surprised you about Cass,” bandmate Michelle Phillips recalled to Eddi Fiegel in her Elliot biography Dream a Little Dream of Me. “She also had a butterfly tattooed on her ass and I’d never heard of a woman getting a tattoo.”

The Mamas and the Papas disbanded shortly afterwards, leading Elliot to finally embark on a solo career. She re-recorded “Dream a Little Dream of Me” for her debut solo album Dream a Little Dream, released just four months later, in October ’68. You can watch a performance of the classic in the video above, when Elliot appeared on the short-lived Ray Stevens Show in June 1970. Elliot strolls across the in a silk nightgown, eventually sitting in front of a lonely candle-lit dinner while singing. “Sweet dreams till sunbeams find you/Sweet dreams that leave all worries behind you.” The song lingers on.

Sat Jul 29, 2023: Flashback: Cass Elliot Performs a Shimmery 'Dream a Little Dream of Me' in 1970

Mon Jul 29, 2019: Flashback: Cass Elliot Performs a Shimmery 'Dream a Little Dream of Me' in 1970

[hlthe2b]

2. Incredibly talented. Gen-Z Youtubers listening to music of the 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s eventually come across

The Mamas and the Papas are blown away by the harmonies. Cass Elliott was irreplaceable.

[OAITW r.2.0]

3. The Mama and the Papa's - harmonically connected....

but not really group connected.