Houston Press: A Mother and a "Mama"—Cass Elliot Remembered by Her Daughter

Owen Elliot-Kugell was only seven years old when her mother died unexpectedly. And though her mom’s birth certificate read “Ellen Naomi Cohen,” fans around the world knew the woman with the powerhouse voice and buoyant stage presence by another name: Cass Elliot.

Still more knew her as “Mama Cass,” derived from her best-known role as one of the four voices in the folk-rockers The Mamas and The Papas of the 1960s. They hit big with songs like “California Dreamin’,” “Monday, Monday,” “Dedicated to the One I Love” and “I Saw Her Again Last Night.” 

But it was two showstopping vehicles for Elliot that showed her range. The sweet-sounding “Dream a Little Dream of Me” and the volcanic “Words of Love” really showcased those pipes. 

And after the group broke up, Elliot had embarked on a solo career that found her adding a bit of show and Broadway tunes to her repertoire, while appearing on many TV variety shows and even guest-hosting The Tonight Show.

However, Elliot died in 1974 at just the age of 32, leaving Elliot-Kugell to be raised by her aunt and uncle. For the past 50 years, she’s asked and been asked questions about her mother’s life, legacy and loss. 

It all comes full circle in Elliot-Kugell’s new book, My Mama, Cass (279 pp., $30, Hachette Books). Equal parts biography, autobiography, and memoir, it’s a tale that Elliot-Kugell has literally waited her entire life to tell.

“They wouldn’t have been what they were without her. Oh, to have been a fly on the wall on in that restaurant when my mom was waiting on tables. Her calling in her vocal parts from the floor! It was like ‘You may not want me to do it, but you’re going to continue to hear it!’” Elliot-Kugell says.

“But she got the last laugh when they begged her to go to that first meeting with [record producer] Lou Adler. And when they came back the next day, there was a contract waiting for her.”

John Phillips’ reticence about Elliot also extended to one ugly part: Her overweightness was an issue, seemingly “messing up” the visual image he wanted the group to project. Elliot herself had long steeled up with a sort of self-deprecating response. She’s often made a “fat joke” before anybody else could to diffuse the situation.

Still, it’s hard today to watch some of those post-Mamas & Papas TV appearances today where Eliot’s size is the butt of a joke, with her standing right there. The lyric from “Creeque Alley” that goes “And no one’s getting fat/Except Mama Cass” was cruel then, and ages worse.

Elliot-Kugell says that her mother’s size would not likely even be an issue in today.

“We’ve come so much further as a society. We don’t allow people to make fun of people’s weight today,” she says. “We know now what the damage it does, even in a society that I think is over-therapized. You can’t make a fat joke about somebody and expect them not to be upset about it.”

A related bit has to do with Elliot’s purported cause of death. It was first reported and became urban legend that she had died choking on a ham sandwich in bed. In reality, while there was a sandwich (possibly never even bitten into) on her nightstand, the actual cause of death was due to a heart attack that Elliot suffered in her sleep.

But the sandwich story took flight when her manager Allan Carr—cognizant of the recent spate of drug-induced rock star deaths—strangely believed that the choking story would somehow look better, at least initially. And with the willing participation of journalist Sue Cameron of The Hollywood Reporter, it became “fact.” A guilt-ridden Cameron even apologized to Elliot-Kugell years later. She hopes that the truth is set in stone once and for all with this book.