Mama Cass Elliot

Biography

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 five studio albums. Elliot was found dead in her room in London from an apparent heart attack after two sold-out performances at the Palladium. Ellen Cohen was born in Baltimore, Maryland, to Philip and Bess Cohen. She grew up in Baltimore, and then the f...

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 five studio albums. Elliot was found dead in her room in London from an apparent heart attack after two sold-out performances at the Palladium.

Ellen Cohen was born in Baltimore, Maryland, to Philip and Bess Cohen. She grew up in Baltimore, and then the family moved to 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 dropping out of George Washington High School shortly before graduation, 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.
Cass Elliot with Tim Rose and James Hendricks as part of the Big Three

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.

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 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,
“ 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. ”

However, according to people who knew her well, this was not true - Elliot always had a standout singing voice. Her friends said that the pipe story was used as a more politically-correct explanation for why John had kept her out of the group for so long, because the real reason she was not accepted sooner was that John considered her to be too fat. Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.