Cass Elliot
Ellen Naomi Cohen, known professionally by the stage name Cass Elliot, was an American singer, songwriter, comedian, television personality, and stage actress. A member of the singing group The Mamas & the Papas, she was also known as "Mama Cass", a name she reportedly disliked. After the group broke up, Elliot released five solo albums. She received the Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Performance for "Monday, Monday". In 1998, she was posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame for her work with The Mamas & the Papas.
Early life and education
Ellen Naomi Cohen was born on September 19, 1941, in Baltimore, Maryland, the daughter of Philip and Bess Cohen. 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, and when she was 15, the family moved back to Baltimore, 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.
Career
1962–1964: Early career
After leaving high school to pursue an entertainment career in New York, Elliot toured in the musical The Music Man in 1962 under the name Cass Elliot, but lost the part of Miss Marmelstein in I Can Get It for You Wholesale to Barbra Streisand. Elliot sometimes sang while working as a cloakroom attendant at The Showplace in Greenwich Village, but she did not pursue a singing career until she moved to the Washington, DC, area to attend American University.America's folk music scene was on the rise when 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 3. Elliot's first recording with the Big 3 was "Winken, Blinken, and Nod", released by FM Records in 1963. In 1964, the group appeared on an "open mic" night at The Bitter End in Greenwich Village, billed as Cass Elliot and the Big 3, followed onstage by folk singer Jim Fosso and bluegrass banjoist Eric Weissberg.
Tim Rose left the Big 3 in 1964, and Elliot and Hendricks teamed with Canadians Zal Yanovsky and Denny Doherty to form the Mugwumps. This group lasted eight months, after which Cass performed as a solo act for a while. In the meantime, Yanovsky and John Sebastian co-founded the Lovin' Spoonful, while Doherty joined the New Journeymen, a group that also included John Phillips and his wife Michelle. In 1965, Doherty persuaded Phillips that Elliot should join the group, which she did while the group members and she 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 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:
Friends later said 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.
1965–1968: The Mamas & the Papas
With two female members, the New Journeymen needed a new name. According to Doherty, Elliot came up with the name The Mamas & the Papas. Elliot was known for her sense of humor and optimism, and was considered by many to be the most charismatic member of the group. Her powerful, distinctive voice was a major factor in their string of hits, including "California Dreamin', "Monday, Monday", and "Words of Love". She also performed 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. Elliot's version is noteworthy for its contemplative pace, whereas many earlier recordings of "Dream a Little Dream of Me" had been up-tempo versions—the song having been written in 1931 as a dance tune. The Mamas & the Papas lasted from 1965 to 1968, with a brief reunion in 1971.1968–1973: Solo career
After the breakup of The Mamas and & Papas, Elliot embarked on a 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 released earlier that year on the album The Papas & The Mamas.Las Vegas show
In October 1968, Elliot made her live solo debut headlining in Las Vegas at Caesars Palace, scheduled for a three-week engagement at $40,000 per week with two shows per night. According to Elliot, she went on a six-month crash diet before the show, losing 100 of her 300 pounds. However, she attributed a stomach ulcer and throat problems to her severe regimen, which she treated by drinking milk and cream—rapidly regaining 50 pounds in the process.She was confined to her bed for three weeks before the first performance while the musical director, band, and production supervisor attempted to put together a show in her absence. She was scheduled to rehearse for a full three days before the show opened, but she managed to get through only part of one run-through with the band before saying that she was losing her voice. She skipped the remainder of rehearsals and drank tea and lemon, hoping to recover and pull herself together for opening night.
An audience of 950 people filled the Circus Maximus theater at Caesar's Palace on the evening of Wednesday, October 16, including Sammy Davis Jr., Peter Lawford, Jimi Hendrix, Joan Baez, Liza Minnelli, and Mia Farrow, who had sent flowers to Elliot's dressing room, but backstage she had developed a raging fever. Friends urged her manager to cancel the show, but she felt that it was too important and insisted on performing. Sick and having barely rehearsed, she began to fall apart during the course of her first performance; her voice was weak and barely audible, and the large crowd was unsympathetic, despite the celebrity well-wishers. At the end of the show, Elliot returned to the stage to apologize to the audience; "This is the first night, and it will get better", she said. She then sang "Dream a Little Dream of Me" and left the stage as the audience applauded half-heartedly. She returned later that night to perform the second show, but her voice was worse, and many of the audience noisily walked out.
Reviews were harsh. Esquire magazine called the show "Sink Along with Cass" and "a disaster" that was "heroic in proportion, epic in scope". The Los Angeles Free Press called it "an embarrassing drag", while Newsweek compared it to the Titanic disaster: "Like some great ocean liner embarking on an ill-fated maiden voyage, Mama Cass slid down the waves and sank to the bottom". The show closed after only one night, and Elliot flew back to Los Angeles for what was described as "a tonsillectomy".
Within hours of the end of Elliot's Las Vegas concert, rumors began to spread that she had been taking drugs during the weeks leading up to it. Eddi Fiegel wrote in the biography Dream a Little Dream of Me that Elliot later admitted to a boyfriend that she had injected heroin immediately before going on stage. Embarrassed by the debacle, Elliot plunged into a deep depression.
Later work
Elliot appeared in two television variety specials: The Mama Cass Television Program and Don't Call Me Mama Anymore. She was a regular guest on TV talk shows and variety shows in the early 1970s, including The Mike Douglas Show, The Andy Williams Show, Hollywood Squares, The Johnny Cash Show, The Ray Stevens Show, The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, and The Carol Burnett Show, and was a guest panelist for a week on the game show Match Game '73. She guest-hosted for Johnny Carson on The Tonight Show and appeared as a guest on the show 13 other times. She also appeared on and co-hosted The Music Scene on ABC and was featured on the first The Midnight Special on NBC.Elliot performed the title song "The Good Times Are Comin during the opening sequence of the 1970 film Monte Walsh, starring Lee Marvin and Jack Palance. In 1970, Elliot was signed to RCA Records; her first album for RCA, Cass Elliot, was issued in January, 1972. Also in 1972, she made three appearances on the variety series The Julie Andrews Hour. Her final appearance on the show was the Christmas installment that aired on Wednesday, December 20, 1972. In December 1978, four years after Elliot's death, the episode was rebroadcast on syndicated stations as a Christmas special titled Merry Christmas with Love, Julie. However, all of Elliot's solos were deleted from the syndicated edit. In 2009, a complete videotape of The Julie Andrews Hour Christmas Show was donated to The Paley Center For Media in New York, with all of Elliot's numbers intact.
In 1973, Elliot performed in Saga of Sonora, a TV music-comedy-Western special with Jill St. John, Vince Edwards, Zero Mostel, and Lesley Ann Warren. She also sang the jingle "Hurry on down to Hardee's, where the burgers are charco-broiled" for Hardee's advertisements. Throughout the early 1970s, Elliot continued her acting career, as well. She had a featured role in the movie Pufnstuf and made guest appearances on TV's The New Scooby-Doo Movies; Young Dr. Kildare; Love, American Style; and The Red Skelton Show; among others.
File:Cass Elliot Diahann Carroll Jack Lemmon Jack Lemmon Special 1973.jpg|thumb|upright|From left to right: Elliot, Diahann Carroll and Jack Lemmon in 1973In 1973, Elliot hired as her manager Allan Carr, who was also managing the careers of Tony Curtis, Ann-Margret, and Peter Sellers. Carr felt Elliot needed to leave pop and rock music and head into the cabaret circuit, so a show was put together comprising old standards along with a few new songs written for her by friends. The act included Elliot and two male singers who served as backup singers and sidekicks during the musical numbers. The title of the show was Don't Call Me Mama Anymore, named after one of the songs written by Elliot's friend Earle Brown. The song was born out of Elliot's frustration with being identified as "Mama Cass". The show debuted in Pittsburgh on February 9, 1973. Elliot felt ready to tackle Las Vegas once again and premiered at the Flamingo. This time, she received rave reviews. The Las Vegas Sun wrote, "Cass Elliot, making a strong point that she is no longer Mama Cass, has a good act serving notice that she is here to stay. The audience was with her all the way ... no empty seats anywhere." She then took her act to higher-echelon casinos and swankier nightclubs in cities throughout the country.
Elliot provided the voice for her appearance on the 1973 episode of The New Scooby-Doo Movies, "The Haunted Candy Factory". She also appeared on Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated in the episodes "The Secret Serum", "Pawn of Shadows", and "Dance of the Undead" as a Crystal Cove citizen.
The city of Baltimore dedicated August 15, 1973, as "Cass Elliot Day" in her honor for her homecoming.