[Kathleen]

Denny Doherty, Mamas and Papas Singer, Is Dead at 66

By BEN SISARIO
Published: January 20, 2007
Denny Doherty, a founding member of the 1960s folk-pop band the Mamas and the Papas, died yesterday at his home in Mississauga, Ontario. He was 66The cause was not immediately known, his daughter Emberly said. But she said her father had recently suffered kidney failure after surgery for a stomach aneurysm.

With chiming guitars and rich, meticulous harmonies that could be tinged with darkness, the Mamas and the Papas became one of the most popular and influential American bands of the era between the Beatles’ arrival and Woodstock. Their enduring hits, like “California Dreamin’,” “Monday, Monday” and “Dedicated to the One I Love,” mixed the gentle jangle of folk with a rock backbeat and sweet, layered pop vocals.

Though John Phillips was the group’s principal songwriter, Mr. Doherty sang most of the male leads, in a clear, friendly tenor that he occasionally punctuated with rock ’n’ roll growls. In “California Dreamin’,” the group’s first hit, the singers harmonize about being stuck among the brown leaves and cold gray skies of winter, and pining for sunny respite. But Mr. Doherty’s lead on the verse suggests that his wishes may go unfulfilled:

Well, I got down on my knees

And I pretend to pray

You know the preacher likes the cold

He knows I’m gonna stay

The song was released in late 1965 after the group signed with the Dunhill label. After stalling at first, it entered the charts the next year in the dead of February — with particular popularity in the Northeast — and reached No. 4.

The Mamas and the Papas, who were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1998, were one of the first major rock groups to include both women and men in equal performing roles, with Mr. Doherty, Mr. Phillips, Michelle Phillips and Cass Elliot striking an image of casual, collegiate friendship. In reality, they were a destructive tangle of love affairs, accompanied by plenty of drugs and alcohol.

“It was an untenable situation,” Mr. Doherty said in an interview with The New York Times in 2000. “Cass wanted me, I wanted Michelle, John wanted Michelle, Michelle wanted me, she wanted her freedom. ...”

In 1968, the Phillipses divorced and the group dissolved, but it had a brief reunion in the early ’70s.

Though the Mamas and the Papas became associated with Los Angeles, the group had its origins in the Greenwich Village folk scene of the early ’60s. Mr. Doherty, who was born in Halifax, Nova Scotia, was playing in a group called the Halifax Three. After it broke up, he joined Ms. Elliot’s band, the Big Three, which changed its name to the Mugwumps and went electric.

Mr. Phillips, meanwhile, was playing in the Journeymen with Ms. Phillips, and after the Mugwumps disbanded, Mr. Doherty joined them in the New Journeymen. With Ms. Elliot in tow, the new group went to St. Thomas in the Virgin Islands to rehearse, and eventually moved to Los Angeles. (The whole picaresque history, with shout-outs to former band mates like John Sebastian of the Lovin’ Spoonful, is recounted in the group’s “Creeque Alley,” a No. 5 hit in 1967.)

Mr. Doherty, who used some of the riches the group collected to buy a house in the Laurel Canyon section of Los Angeles that had once been owned by the Hollywood actress Mary Astor, released two solo albums in the early ’70s and starred in a Broadway show, “Man on the Moon,” written by Mr. Phillips and produced by Andy Warhol. It began performances in late 1974 and closed five weeks later.

Ms. Elliot died in 1974, and Mr. Phillips died in 2001.

The Mamas and the Papas had another reunion in the early ’80s, with Mr. Phillips, Mr. Doherty, Mr. Phillips’s daughter Mackenzie and Elaine (Spanky) McFarlane.

After returning to Canada, Mr. Doherty pursued his acting career, starring in “Theodore Tugboat,” a popular children’s television show produced by the Canadian Broadcasting Company, which ran for most of the 1990s. As the only human on the show, he played the character of the Harbor Master, introducing each segment. It was broadcast on about 200 PBS affiliates and was shown in 80 countries.

Mr. Doherty also developed an autobiographical stage show, “Dream a Little Dream: The Nearly True Story of the Mamas and the Papas,” starting it in Halifax in 1999. He performed it Off Broadway at the Village Theater in 2003.

In addition to Emberly, Mr. Doherty’s survivors include another daughter, Jessica Woods, and a son, John Doherty, also of Mississauga; and three sisters and a brother.
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This one hits me particularly hard. The group was always a favorite of mine and I just saw Denny at The Village Gate in New York with his play in 2003. He still sang like a dream.

A lousy way to end Friday

Kathleen