"Mama" Cass Elliot, the voluptuous and heavily sultry-voiced mezzo-soprano who sang with the Mama's and the Papas, was born just 75 years ago. With her fame came the opening of a door: to freedom, to confidence, and to open-mindedness towards women with large voices and bodies.
Cass was born in Baltimore, Maryland, but she grew up in Washington DC. Her senior year of high school, she performed in a summer production of "The Boyfriend" at the Owings Mills Playhouse. In this production, she found her niche, and although her parents had desires and anticipation for her to go to college, she had a different plan. After all, Cass had gotten a small taste of show business and she couldn't get enough. She "made a splash in New York" (as stated by the Official Cass Elliot Website) and began her career with live theatre.
In the following years, she teamed up with several artists, performing in groups such as The Big Three (formerly known as the Triumvirate) and The Mugwumps. Eventually, "Papa" Denny Doherty joined with John and Michelle Phillips and they were known as "The New Journeymen". Not too long after, Denny, John and Michelle left for the Virgin Islands, Cass joining them soon after, and they became what we know today as the Mamas and the Papas.
In the beginning, legend has is that Denny, John, and Michelle didn't originally want Cass because of her weight. They thought she would wreck their image... until they heard her voice. Cass's voice was unique for the time period; it was heavy, yet it carried and moved through fast paced licks with ease. It was low for a female, but it carried like no other, and her vibrato was entirely natural and unforced, which was rare in the music scene at that point. Her voice is the epitome of the Flower Child charm that comes with the mental image of the late 1960's. She eventually went solo when the Mamas and the Papas broke up, and passed away on the night she got her very first standing ovation.
Cass Elliot, above all, has paved the way for plus size women in the years to follow. Before her rise to fame, designers did not create plus size clothing. Teens and young women above a certain weight usually had their mothers or someone else design clothes especially for their size, which would get expensive and often looked like glorified garbage bags with patterns. Go-Go boots were not yet available to women with wide calves.
Yes, there have been other plus size women with an impact on music and fashion. In many of our eyes, however, if Cass Elliot had not existed and had such a beautiful soul, perhaps other celebrities such as Adele, Meghan Trainor, and Melissa McCarthy would not have had the confidence to grace our radios, stages, televisions and ears. Perhaps you and I would still be wearing garbage bags. Perhaps there would be no fat representation in the music business today at all.
Perhaps, things would have gone as usual. However, it is a pleasant thought that Cass is the reason that I am sitting here today, 230lbs, wearing leggings without anyone thinking twice and being able to write an article about her beautiful life and the impact she had.
"Mama" Cass Elliot was born on September 19th, 1941 and passed away of a heart attack on July 29, 1974. She would be turning 75 years old.
