Product Description
Despite her background in {|folk|} music and her popular emergence as {|Mama Cass|} in the {|folk-rock|} group {|the Mamas & the Papas|}, {|Cass Elliot|} was really a {|traditional pop|} entertainer in the pre-{|rock|} tradition, and she gradually turned to that field in her solo career of the late '60s and early '70s, putting together a Las Vegas {|cabaret|} act and appearing frequently on television. On this live album, recorded at {|Mister Kelly's|}, the prestigious Chicago nightclub, in the summer of 1973, she performed her act, which she was polishing in preparation for its adaptation into a television special in the fall. The album was released concurrently with the broadcast of the special, and the album cover describes it as recreating selected highlights from her {|CBS|} television special, which isn't exactly accurate, but never mind. She sings several songs that were written for her and for this act, among them the title song, {|Earl Brown|}'s extrapolation of her desire to escape the {|Mama Cass|} moniker. {|Extraordinary,|} borrowed from the Broadway {|musical|} {|Pippin|}, is given special lyrics to relate to {|Elliot|}, and {|I'm Coming to the Best Part of My Life|} is an optimistic statement of her view of the future. The heart of the show is {|The Torch Song Medley,|} which allows her to exercise her pipes on {|standards|} like {|I Gotta Right to Sing the Blues|} and {|I Got It Bad and That Ain't Good,|} demonstrating her abilities with such material for anyone who might have missed her treatments of {|Glad to Be Unhappy|} and {|Dream a Little Dream of Me.|} Unfortunately, {|Elliot|}'s successful transition into being a middle-of-the-road entertainer meant that she had to suffer the fate of her fellow {|pop|} singers, banishment from the charts. More tragically, this turned out to be her final album before her death. ~ William Ruhlmann
