Four voices, one folk habit that John Phillips had to break

The Mamas & the Papas were born out of two folk worlds. John Phillips and his wife Michelle came from the Journeymen, Denny Doherty from the Mugwumps, and Cass Elliot, Doherty’s bandmate in that group, was the last to join. Her entry was not smooth. John Phillips worried that her voice was too low for his arrangements, that her weight would hurt the band and that their temperaments would clash. Elliot struggled with her weight all her life and felt deeply insecure about her appearance, and her membership was only formalized when the others overruled him.

Phillips was the leader and songwriter, and he arranged the vocal harmonies that defined the sound. He was also reluctant to let go of folk. Doherty and guitarist Eric Hord both said he held onto it “like death”, and Phillips admitted that Doherty and Elliot opened his eyes to contemporary pop as the Beatles played it. The spring and summer of 1965 in the Virgin Islands were where they rehearsed, and where they first tried playing electric.

The group then went to Los Angeles and auditioned for Lou Adler of Dunhill Records, an audition arranged by Barry McGuire. The deal committed them to two albums a year for five years. Their first single, “Go Where You Wanna Go”, failed to chart, but “California Dreamin’”, released in December 1965, reached number 4 in the United States and number 23 in the United Kingdom. Another song tied to the group is “Dream a Little Dream of Me”.

In total they released five studio albums and 17 singles, six of them Billboard top 10 hits, and sold close to 40 million records worldwide. They broke up in 1968, came back briefly for People Like Us in 1971, and were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1998. At that ceremony Elliot’s daughter Owen stood in for her mother, who had died in 1974, so the four-part blend was heard one last time.