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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.
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.
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:
“ 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 Hell's Angels on this talk 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 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. Doherty has said that Cass once proposed to him, but that he was so stoned at the time, he couldn't even respond.
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 almost 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.
They continued to record 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.
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 at Caesar's Palace for the unusually lucrative pay of USD$40,000 per week, although her performances were not well reviewed.
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.
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. 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."
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.
An urban legend arose that Elliot died choking on a ham sandwich. 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.
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