Cass Elliot's Voice

I was the only one to gasp in theatres this summer when two hit movies made allusions to Cass Elliot. Rocketman recreates a party at the home of "Mama Cass" following young Elton John's American debut, where her rich, golden singing voice mixes into other ambient sounds during the scene. Then that voice lends its distinct timbre to the harmony in recordings by the Mamas and the Papas featured in the soundtrack to Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, and, in another scene of a Hollywood party, an unnamed character is clearly intended to be Cass: fat, eating pills like candy, in miniskirt and go - go boots, dancing with "Michelle Phillips," who was the other "mama" in the group.


Cass Elliot died of massive heart failure following a sold - out concert at the London Palladium, where she no doubt sang the lyrics written for her night club act, "I'm coming to the best part of my life." She was only thirty - two years old.


I'm nearly twice that old now, and for fifty years her voice has been what I hear when I sing - in the shower, at the piano, or in church. I first heard "Mama Cass" on my radio in a cheerful but pretty stupid song, "Move In a Little Closer, Baby." The highly repetitive refrain was an earworm, but her voice was equally memorable. It matched the quality of the song's brass fanfare - bright and maybe a little cutting in the highest register, warm and smooth at the low end. A year or two later, my dad introduced me to another of her songs, "It's Gettin' Better," because he liked the sentiment:

Once I believed that when love came to me,
It would come with rockets, bells, and poetry.
But with me and you,
It just started quietly, and grew.
And believe it or not,
Now there's something groovy and good 'bout whatever we've got.
'Cause it's gettin' better...

That's how Dad thought of his marriage, to his dying day. It's a pop tune stuck in its g - droppin' groovy time, never covered or played anymore, but it remains an anthem for me.

Both "Move in a Little Closer, Baby" and "It's Gettin' Better" were on the first of several LP's I collected that featured Cass Elliot, both as soloist and as member of the Mamas and the Papas. I sang along, matching my voice and inflections to hers, and began to fancy myself a great singer. I didn't get a lot of feedback on that from my long - suffering family, but that didn't quell my inner Cass.

Only now, through some internet research, I've discovered that this most uncool of all my uncool enthusiasms in middle school was actually closely connected to the coolest icons out there: Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin. A documentary told about drugs, rock - and - roll, and, yes, sex. Cass's sunny music is eclipsed in the documentary by tales of Cass's unrequited desire for "Papa" Denny, bitter resentment of Michelle, illnesses caused by substance abuse and starvation diets, and unconsummated marriages of convenience. Cass never identified the father of her daughter.


I prefer to think of a triumphant arc to her story. Cass Elliot, born Ellen Naomi Cohen, came close to the career she wanted when she was called back for the comic role of the secretary in the Broadway musical I Can Get it for You Wholesale, but the show is remembered now for making a star of the singer who beat Cass for that part, Barbra Streisand. On the rebound, Cass joined folk groups in coffee houses, then found huge success with the Mamas and the Papas in folk - rock. The surprise success of her solo recording of an old Bing Crosby song "Dream a Little Dream of Me" gave her the chance to go solo, with modest success. She recorded pop, some country - inflected songs, and an album with rock guitarist Dave Mason. She was a frequent guest on variety shows.  She found her true voice at the very end, when she made a live recording of her night club act, "Don't Call Me Mama Anymore." For me, even though I loved the upbeat numbers most, the song in that set that made the most lasting impression was Cass's voice at its warmest doing a sensitive, heartfelt reading of  "I'll Be Seeing You." At last, a song for grown ups!  CBS TV featured her in a "special," a pilot for a series of her own.





Perhaps because she had tried on so many personae -- pop girl, folky earth mother, glamour queen -- and because she kept going despite the derision, she became a gay icon. An English play A Beautiful Thing and the movie made from it make Cass Elliot's voice the soundtrack to a love story for two young men who find each other and find acceptance among working - class neighbors in public housing. Lyrics to some of Cass's songs seem to be directed at the Stonewall Generation of gays who finally came out of the closet to tell the world that they wouldn't be afraid anymore:

Make your own kind of music
Sing your own special song
Make your own kind of music
Even if nobody else sings along.
 -"Make Your Own Kind of Music" by Barry Mann and Cynthia Weill

This summer's posthumous appearances by Cass remind me of one time that she appeared in a film, one I rushed to see fifty years ago, Pufnstuf, an Oz - like fantasy. Cass played a witch, first appearing in a bathtub, up to her neck in bananas, grapes, and other fruit. She sang a song by Norman Gimbel and Charles Fox, even more "Stonewall" --

At first I'd wonder
What hex I was under.
What did I do to be so different?
Then I discovered
Some others like me.
Wonder no longer,
Together we're stronger.
It's not so bad to be different.
Be truly yourself,
That's what you must be.

Cass, you lifted up a lot of second - rate material with that beautiful voice.  The songs may be gone, but the sound and the feeling remain. I'm grateful.