Watch Cass Elliot’s stunning live performance of ‘Dream a Little Dream of Me’ on British TV
Cass Elliot aka Mama Cass is a sort of spiritual numen of the 1960s. Her presence and her prowess imbued it with a flowery shade of sheer sheltering joy. Alongside her bombastic talent was an air of humility that rubbed off on others. As she once said, “My role in the Mamas and Papas was basically just to sing.” But boy could she sing!
In fact, you don’t have to look any further than her performance alongside Joni Mitchell and Mary Travers during which she just about wipes the floor with them, and that’s saying something. With a Mezzo-Soprano style, Elliot scaled a vast octave range and also somehow retain both power and a lilting lullaby quality no matter where her vocal performance wandered.
Extraordinarily, she was even wildly humble about how this style came to be. “It’s true, I did get hit on the head by a pipe that fell down and my range was increased by three notes,” she told Rolling Stone back in 1968. “They were tearing this club apart in the islands, revamping it, putting in a dance floor.”
Comically continuing: “Workmen dropped a thin metal plumbing pipe and it hit me on the head and knocked me to the ground. I had a concussion and went to the hospital. I had a bad headache for about two weeks and all of a sudden I was singing higher. It’s true. Honest to God.”
Whether or not that genuinely is fact and not fiction, she could breeze her way around notes with an ease that is rare to find in music, especially when it is accompanied by such unbridled personality. Yes, Elliot is a perfect example of soul showing up in sound, and that was even more apparent live when the old cliché comes to mind about the audience enjoying it if you are too.
In 1970, when the star appeared on the British TV show It’s Lulu that came right to the fore. In fact, Lulu even joined her to lend a helping hand to her definitive effort ‘Dream a Little Dream of Me’. As ever, the performance is both stirring and simply fun in equal measure.
Elliot was a star who didn’t take things too seriously, famously quipping: “I would say the world’s in terrible shape, but I’m afraid the world would say. ‘Look who’s talking!’” It’s that sort of self-effacing charm that shines through in her performances and with ‘Dream a Little Dream of Me’ being as beautiful as any, that makes for a magical combination.
