"California Earthquake" by Cass Elliot

This is not the song I wanted to play here - that would have been Make Your Own Kind of Music - but such are the vagaries of YouTube that the vid you might be looking for isn't always available when you need it. That was the case, anyway, on this day in 2007 when I first posted this; I have since posted it to mark the July 1974 death of Cass Elliot.

Anyway, this song's good too, and shows both her and her voice to their best advantage. Plus it's obscure, which I personally love; California Earthquake made it all the way to #67 in 1968.
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In Memoriam: "Mama" Cass Elliot

There's a special place in my heart - and thus a place of honour at the Pop Culture Institute - for anyone who defies the prevailing looksism of their times and becomes a success despite it; Cass Elliot - born on this day in 1941 - was one such person.

In an age of waif-like hippie chicks, Cass was not one; though she exhibited a brave face and a healthy attitude, it had to have hurt to see the men she loved continually pass her over for thinner women, then come crying to her when things didn't work out. I know it's always pissed me off.

Not only was Cass successful with The Mamas & the Papas, she also had a thriving solo career, beginning in 1968. It was not to last. Cass died of a heart attack in July 1974; she did not, according to the popular myth, choke on a ham sandwich.

She is survived by, among others, a sister named Leah Kunkel and a daughter Owen Vanessa Elliot.
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"Make Your Own Kind Of Music" by "Mama" Cass Elliot

Make Your Own Kind of Music first appeared on Cass Elliot's 1969 solo album Bubblegum, Lemonade and Something for Mama (which appears not to be on CD - boo! hiss!!); inasmuch as every song posted on the Pop Culture Institute can in some way be taken as an anthem of ours, so is this one, only more so. In a world where most creative children have their sparks doused* Elliot's message is not only sympathetic to that plight but defiant in the face of it as well. What a wonderful world this would be if those adults whose dreams had been thwarted as children would not only leave their succeeding generation alone to create and dream in peace but make it their responsibility to see that it never happened again...

Elliot's death (on this day in 1974, at the age of only 32) has often been erroneously attributed to a ham sandwich - a misogynist as well as fattist attribution; the truth is that she died in her sleep of a heart attack, and was found with a partially eaten sandwich in her room, which gave rise to the inaccurate speculation.

Her death came at the height of a career high, following the second of two triumphant shows at the London Palladium; she was survived by her seven year old daughter Owen Vanessa Elliot, who went to live with Cass' sister Leah Kunkel, and later became a singer in her own right. Despite the utter dearth of information about the younger Elliot online, interest in her is obviously high; when I published her name in a post on this blog to mark the occasion of Cass Elliot's birthday in 2008 I recorded several hundred hits over the next three months as a result.

*More prevalent then than now, but still an all-too persistent trend in the culture, sadly.
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