Cass Elliot

Ellen Naomi Cohen was born September 19, 1941 in Baltimore, Maryland and died July 29, 1974 in London at age thirty-two. She is universally remembered by her stage name “Cass” Elliot, or later as “Mama” Cass Elliot of The Mamas & the Papas.

Alexandria teenage years

The Cohen family moved to Alexandria, Virginia in approximately 1957, when Ellen was fifteen. Her father Philip Cohen and mother Bess Cohen ran a small delicatessen in the Del Ray / Mount Vernon Avenue area of Alexandria during the family’s roughly three-year residency. Ellen attended George Washington High School (the same 1005 Mount Vernon Avenue Place 1005 Mount Vernon Avenue Brick Stripped Classical / Art Deco school on Mount Vernon Avenue in Del Ray, built 1934 and opened 1935 as George Washington High School — a consolidation of the city's earlier … that Jim Morrison Person Jim Morrison b. 1943 · d. 1971 Lead vocalist and lyricist of The Doors. Son of a U.S. Navy admiral; attended Alexandria's (then George Washington High School) class of 1961 while his family lived in Alexandria … would graduate from a year after the Cohens left Alexandria), but she did not graduate — leaving school in 1960 to pursue a singing career in New York City.

The exact street address of the Cohen family delicatessen has not been firmly documented in the surfaced public sources, and is a research target for a future deepening pass against Alexandria city directories at Alexandria Library Special Collections. ^[1] Source 1 Alexandria Library Special Collections Manuscript

Career arc

After leaving Alexandria, Ellen sang with the folk group The Big Three, then The Mugwumps in Greenwich Village 1963–64. She co-founded The Mamas & the Papas in late 1965 with John Phillips, Michelle Phillips, and Denny Doherty; the group’s debut album appeared in February 1966 and produced the breakthrough single “California Dreamin’” along with “Monday, Monday,” “Dedicated to the One I Love,” and “Creeque Alley.” Cass took the group’s lead vocal on “Dream a Little Dream of Me” (1968).

She launched a solo career after the Mamas & the Papas dissolved in 1968, recording five solo albums through 1973 and headlining a successful Las Vegas residency. She died in her sleep at a London apartment on July 29, 1974 of a heart attack brought on by undiagnosed cardiac complications.