The Encyclopedia of Dead Rock Stars (307 page)

Denny Doherty’s passing left his former partner, singer Michelle Phillips, as the only surviving original member of California pop crooners The Mamas & The Papas.

It could be argued that Doherty’s powerful voice was what brought the legendary unit into being, his early folk units The Hepsters (with school pals Mike O’Connell, Richard Sheehan and Eddie Thibodeau) and The Colonials (with Dick Byrne and Pat LaCroix) gaining him attention when Doherty was just a teenager playing the Halifax club scene. The latter unit morphed into The Halifax Three when Columbia Records approached them - a more successful enterprise that spawned two albums and a minor hit in ‘The Man Who Wouldn’t Sing Along with Mitch’ (1962). (The band’s fondness for wordplay and irony was echoed by the fact that they broke up at The Colonial Hotel in 1963.)

Doherty’s next musical acquaintances proved more enduring, however. During performances in Greenwich Village - the hip new locale for would-be folk-rockers - he encountered Big Three singer Cass Elliot, with whom he was shortly to form The Mugwumps, the group completed by Toronto-born maverick Zal Yanovsky and local boy John Sebastian as fellow singers and guitarists. While the latter pairing went on to form their own highly-successful unit, The Lovin’ Spoonful, Doherty and Elliot then chanced upon singers John Phillips - whose band sought replacements - and his partner Michelle Phillips (nee Gilliam). This was the final stepping stone to some haunting melodies, close harmonising - and serious commercial return.

Thus Doherty, Elliot, Phillips and Gilliam became The Mamas & The Papas, and the hits began to flow like fine summer wine: the first of eleven Top Forty hits, ‘California Dreamin’’ (1965) hit the US Top Five, shifting almost a million copies into the bargain, while follow-up ‘Monday Monday’ claimed top position at the start of 1966. The group’s debut long-player
If You Can Believe Your Eyes and Ears
similarly achieved platinum status as it, too, topped the charts. By this time, Doherty had begun an onoff affair with Michelle Phillips, which prompted an inevitable fallout with her husband and briefly cost his lover her place in the band.

Somehow, The Mamas & The Papas sustained things long enough to play a memorable set at Monterey and put out further big-selling albums and hit singles including ‘Dedicated to the One I Love’ (1967) - which suffered the ignominy of peaking at number two in both the US and the UK - and ‘Creeque Alley’ (1967) - which appeared to document both the group’s early career and its current growing crisis, Doherty now drinking to deal with the loss of his love. Although the latter hit’s humorous lyric joked about Cass Elliot’s not-inconsiderable size, it was the weight of their own problems that finally caused The Mamas & The Papas to fragment in 1968, just as the group’s fourth album was break-ing. (A near-farcical situation then ensued when the band discovered that their contractual obligations tied them to one further album: in 1971, Phillips had to book members individually to record their parts to his songs.)

By now, Doherty was recording and releasing his own material, though without the reception to which he’d become used. For 1974’s
Waiting for a Song,
the artist called in both Michelle Phillips and Cass Elliot for backup vocals. For the latter, it was to be her last studio foray: Elliot died in London during a summer tour
(
July 1974).
Clearly devastated by the loss of his friend, Doherty attended her Los Angeles funeral alongside John and Michelle Phillips, confessing that Elliot had even asked him to marry her after the group’s split.

In his later years, Denny Doherty found time to host television shows in Canada, join a reformed Mamas & The Papas - and even write an off-Broadway musical based on his experiences with the group,
Dream a Little Dream.
His death, from an abdominal aneurysm on 19 January 2007 in Ontario, came just as he’d completed the shooting of a part for the Canadian TV series
Trailer Park Boys.

See also
John Phillips (
Golden Oldies #11); Zal Yanovsky (
December 2002)

FEBRUARY

Golden Oldies #43

Billy Henderson

(Detroit, Michigan, 9 August 1939)

The Spinners

The Domingoes were Billy Henderson, Henry Fambrough, Pervis Jackson, George Dixon (who replaced future Originals singer C P Spencer) and lead singer Bobby Smith (who replaced brief member James Edwards), a bunch of Royal Oak Township school pals who got together as a vocal troupe in the fifties and began impressing Michigan audiences with their street performances.

Although real success wasn’t to come their way until the seventies, by 1960 the renamed Spinners were a tight and fresh-sounding act. The ubiquitous former Moonglow Harvey Fuqua was the first to see real commercial potential, signing the group to his Tri-Phi label and issuing the hit single ‘That’s What Girls Are Made For,’ a 1961 US Top Forty hit that also made the R & B Top Five. (That Fuqua’s brother-in-law was Motown honcho Berry Gordy also helped, as his Motown label bought out Tri-Phi and their roster in 1963.) That hit, however, stood alone for much of the sixties as Henderson and his Spinner colleagues found themselves instead used as drivers and roadies for more successful acts.

A succession of line-up changes culminated in the introduction of the vibrant Philippe Wynne as lead vocalist in 1970. This change in the group’s dynamic prompted none other than Aretha Franklin to recommend The Spinners to Atlantic - and consistent hits finally arrived. The first half of the seventies proved to be the group’s peak period, with ‘I’ll Be Around,’ ‘Could It Be I’m Falling in Love,’ ‘One of a Kind (Love Affair)’ and ‘Games People Play’ all topping the R & B listings and showing very healthy positions on the Billboard Hot 100, while 1974’s ‘Then Came You’ -aided by Dionne Warwick’s contributing vocal - enabled The Spinners to enjoy their only US pop number one. Another change of lead singer - John Edwards, replacing Wynne in 1977 - procured further big hits at the turn of the eighties.

For Billy Henderson, The Spinners were his ‘life’ for some fifty years. The final two decades of this time, however, was almost exclusively on the tour circuit, his long tenure with the group only coming to an end after his attempt to sue the group’s corporation for what he saw as financial irregularities. The stress of touring and litigation were to take their toll on Henderson’s health, the singer dying from complications of diabetes on 2 February 2007 at his home in Daytona Beach, Florida.

See also
Philippe Wynne (
August 1984); Pervis Jackson (
Golden Oldies #74). Other formerSpinners/Domingoes now deceased are CP Spencer (d 2004) and George Dixon (d 2005). (Joe Stubbs (
February 1998) also briefly performed with The Spinners.)