My love affair with music has encompassed pretty much my entire life. Since I was a little girl, I would literally become obsessed with a certain piece of music and then I devour it for weeks until I had all the lyrics and musicality down. Then I would sing it whenever I could. (There are stories of me singing to strangers in the subway and in laundry mats as a tiny thing of five years old.) Not that I wanted to be a singer. I just loved the attention. lol

Cass Elliot's bold pants and power stance fascinated me as a child.

When I was old enough to start buying my own music, I will say perhaps around the ripe age of seven, album cover art work really swayed what records that I spent my hard-earned allowance on. (Notable by my first album purchase, Andy Gibb’s Shadow Dancing. Sigh, that dreamy red shirt and his dreamy blond hair.) Now, I can distinctly remember browsing records one day and coming across this one cover featuring this immensely large woman in these magenta pants. She was standing with three skinny folks, but her entire demeanor made her the star of the cover. I mean, she fucking dominated the cover. DOMINATED IT. Not by her sheer size, which was impressive, but by the sheer force of her mojo. Here was confidence. Here was bigness. I was so taken aback by her countenance that I had to buy the record. The record was The Mamas and The Papas, 16 Of Their Greatest Hits and the woman was the infallible, the undefeatable Mama Cass Elliot, #15 on our countdown.

#15: Mama Cass

Fierce and Xtra Large, Mama Cass looks like a fat Jackie O.

The first thing I want to clear up about Cass Elliot, AKA Mama Cass, is something that I JUST found out myself. And that something is that she did not die because she choked on a ham sandwich. I know that to some of you, that might seem like the most-random statement around, but the truth is that even I believed this rumor to be true and it was only today, when I WIKI’ed Mama Cass that I read that she actually died of a heart attack, go figure. The second thing that I want to say about Cass is that she had style, man! I love it when the big girls do it big and she did. She was known to seduce men in the audience with her singing and swaying of her big hips and then take them backstage with her for a good time. And boy, were the men wild for her bigness. She was rumored not to wear panties on stage so she could shimmy and show them her goods. (My kind of lady!) lol

She was a lady in her own right and even though she would struggle to make her way into the power

Mama Cass was an amaxing lady. Big-boned, Big-hearted and Big-voiced.

group, The Mamas and The Papas, (Rumor had it that John Phillips didn’t want her in the band because she was too fat. Well, let’s take a big moment to say FUCK YOU to John Phillips because she was clearly the talent of the group and he ended up being a molester who fucked and subsequently fucked up his daughter, McKenzie Phillips. Yeah…nasty! So fuck you John Phillips, you incestuous, fat-hating pig.) her voice and persona would not be stifled. Whew. Rumor also has it that when the other two members of the group decided that Cass would stay, Phillips invented a story that the only reason Cass wasn’t allowed to be in the group for so long was because she lacked vocal range. And then the rumor goes that she got hit in the head with a pipe during a club renovation on a vacation with the group and that after she recovered from a concussion, she had a three-note higher vocal range. That’s a petty drawn out story for a simple, “I hate fat people,” situation, eh?

Regardless of the angst in the group, The Mamas and The Papas, along with Cass, would churn out some of the greatest harmonized tracks ever recorded. California Dreamin’, Monday, Monday and Dedicated To The One I Love…just to name a few. When drugs and romantic brouhaha would tear the group apart, Mama Cass would move on to record and be successful all on her own recording and releasing five chart-topping albums all by her self.. Her cover of Dream A Little Dream is still, to this day, one of my favorites.

Sadly, the affable singer would not live long enough to even really come into her own as a performer or amazing icon to the BBW community because she died at the young age of 33 of a heart attack. She was found dead in her London hotel room after two weeks of sold-out performances at the Palladium. A fucking shame, if you ask me.

So today we celebrate Mama Cass for here amazing voice, her pionerring the muumuu as fashionable and her fat confidence and mojo that couldn’t be denied. This one is dedicated to the one I love…Mama Cass, #15.

-goobs