A cloakroom attendant who lost a part to Streisand

Ellen Naomi Cohen was born in Baltimore in 1941, and she picked up the name Cass in high school, possibly from the actress Peggy Cass. “Elliot” came later, in memory of a friend who had died. She became interested in acting at Forest Park High School, won a small role in a summer stock production of The Boy Friend, and left shortly before graduation to try her luck in New York City.

In 1962 she toured in The Music Man as Cass Elliot, but lost the part of Miss Marmelstein in I Can Get It for You Wholesale to Barbra Streisand. She sometimes sang while working as a cloakroom attendant at The Showplace in Greenwich Village. Music became her main path only after she moved to the Washington, DC, area to attend American University.

There she met banjoist Tim Rose and singer John Brown, and the three performed as the Triumvirate. In 1963 James Hendricks replaced Brown and the trio became the Big 3, whose “Winken, Blinken, and Nod” came out on FM Records. After Rose left, Elliot and Hendricks teamed with Canadians Zal Yanovsky and Denny Doherty to form the Mugwumps, a group that lasted eight months.

The story of those years is told in the lyrics to “Creeque Alley”, though it gets a detail wrong, since she attended American University rather than Swarthmore College. She then joined the Mamas & the Papas, with whom she won the Grammy for Best Contemporary (R&R) Performance for “Monday, Monday”. When the group broke up she made five solo albums, and “Dream A Little Dream Of Me” is the song many listeners think of. She died on 29 July 1974 and was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1998.