The Mamas & the Papas
The group that existed for barely three years and defined what the middle of the 1960s sounded like. The Mamas & the Papas came out of a folk trio called the New Journeymen — John Phillips, his wife Michelle, and Denny Doherty — who picked up Cass Elliot in the Virgin Islands and then moved to Los Angeles, where Lou Adler signed them to Dunhill in 1965. They nearly called themselves the Magic Circle. Their sound was four voices stacked into harmonies John Phillips wrote out and drilled into them, over backing tracks played by the Wrecking Crew, and it arrived fully formed: California Dreamin' in December 1965, then Monday, Monday, which went to No.1 and won a Grammy.
They released five studio albums and seventeen singles in four years, six of which reached the American Top 10, and sold close to forty million records. If You Can Believe Your Eyes and Ears was their only album to top the Billboard 200. Phillips and Adler organized the Monterey Pop Festival in June 1967 and the group closed it. Then the Phillipses divorced and it was over — a brief reunion in 1971 for People Like Us, and nothing after. Cass Elliot died in 1974, John Phillips in 2001 and Denny Doherty in 2007. When the group was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1998, Elliot's daughter Owen sang her mother's parts.
Articles on The Mamas & the Papas
Mama Cass Elliot – Make Your Own Kind of Music
Cass Elliot’s “Make Your Own Kind of Music” barely cracked the Top 40 in 1969, then became inescapable decades later
The Mamas & The Papas – I Call Your Name
Cass Elliot – Dream A Little Dream Of Me
The song Cass Elliot almost refused to record became the one that made her a star on her own
The Mamas & the Papas – Dedicated To The One I Love
Michelle Phillips stepped out front for a song that had already lived two hit lives, and The Mamas & the Papas turned its late-night prayer into one of 1967’s most graceful near-misses.
The Mamas & The Papas – California Dreamin’
The backing track was already on tape — Barry McGuire had recorded it first, and the Mamas & the Papas simply sang over the top.
The Mamas & The Papas – Monday Monday
He told them he'd be back in the morning with a song that had universal appeal. They laughed at him.