Denny Doherty

Mamas and Papas' Doherty dies
By CASSANDRA SZKLARSKI


TORONTO (CP) - Halifax-born Denny Doherty was remembered Friday as the "angelic voice" that carried the '60s folk-pop group the Mamas and the Papas through such memorable hits as "California Dreamin' " and "Monday, Monday."

Doherty died early Friday at his home in suburban Mississauga after suffering an aneurysm in his abdomen, said his sister Frances Arnold. He was 66.

"Everybody used to think that John Phillips, who wrote the songs, was also the main voice of the group, but it wasn't - it was the angelic voice of Denny Doherty," said Larry Leblanc, Canadian editor of Billboard Magazine.

"He was often overlooked but it was really his voice that carried the group; also Cass (Elliot) was a formidable singer."

The group's hits also included "Dream a Little Dream of Me" and "Dedicated to the One I Love." Doherty co-wrote the songs "I Saw Her Again Last Night" and "Got a Feelin'. "

Despite being together for just three tumultuous years marked by drug use and destructive love triangles, the Mamas and the Papas had 10 hit singles over five albums. The band broke up in 1968 amid internal squabbling.

Doherty, along with Elliot and John and Michelle Phillips, sold an estimated 20 million records.
In 1974, the 30-year-old Elliot suffered a fatal heart attack. John Phillips, the group's chief songwriter, died in 2001 at age 65.

Michelle Phillips said she last spoke with Doherty on Thursday and believed he was on the way to recovery from recent surgery.

"He was extremely funny and jovial as always and he was just my same old Denny," Phillips said, adding they spoke by phone several times a week.

"I'm still in shock that he didn't survive this."

Kim Cooke of the Canadian Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences compared Doherty to other top performers of the time.

"He was one of a group of Canadians of that era that would have included Leonard Cohen, Neil Young, Joni Mitchell and others who were heading to the U.S. to make music and in some cases, fame and fortune," Cooke said.

"He's an artist that, in terms of career accomplishments, perhaps didn't rank with some of those artists but still had a fine career and really was a key component in some absolutely vital and compelling music."

Doherty started his music career in Montreal in 1960 as the co-founder of the Colonials, which later became the Halifax Three.

Phillips recounted how she and John invited Doherty to become a papa after hearing him sing with the Halifax Three, which broke up in 1965.

"It was so incredible to sing with somebody who had such a beautiful voice because John and I were just little croakers," she said from Los Angeles. "I learned so much from him."

Phillips said she and Elliot's daughter, Owen, plan to travel to Ontario or Nova Scotia once funeral arrangements and a location are determined.

Doherty launched an acting career in the '70s and appeared on Broadway in the 1974 play "Man on the Moon." Later in Halifax, he joined John Neville at the Neptune Theatre, where he was in "The Taming of the Shrew," "Much Ado About Nothing" and "Cabaret."

The Mamas and the Papas had a short-lived comeback in 1982, adding two new faces to the classic group - John's daughter MacKenzie Phillips and Elaine (Spanky) McFarlane.

Doherty was involved in a number of musical projects, including an autobiographical musical, "Dream a Little Dream," which premiered in Nova Scotia in 1996 and had runs in Toronto and New York City.

Doris Mason, a Nova Scotia singer and musician who performed with Doherty for 10 years in the musical, was saddened by news of his death.

"I never tire of the music of the Mamas and the Papas, or singing with Denny because his voice is world class," she said.

"He was a down-home, Halifax north-end boy. . . . I'll treasure the time we had."

Doherty was inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame in 1996.

He also dabbled in television, playing the role of the affable harbourmaster in the children's TV series "Theodore Tugboat."

The show, originally produced in Halifax by CBC, featured a cast of small, radio-controlled tugboats. Doherty provided the narration and the voices for all the characters.

Though the backdrop for the show was known as the Big Harbour, the model set - complete with a huge water tank - was actually a fairly accurate rendering of Halifax harbour.

The show attracted a huge following among its young fans in the mid-1990s when it appeared on CBC and later on PBS, the non-profit public broadcaster in the United States.

Every show featured Doherty's musical, mellifluous voice telling the stories of Theodore the tugboat and his friends, many of whom were named after places in Atlantic Canada.

Doherty suffered kidney problems following surgery Dec. 14 and was put on dialysis, Arnold said. He was released from hospital last week, and Arnold said he sounded tired when she spoke with him just days ago.

"It's got an unreal quality to it, I just can't get it through my head," Arnold, 78, said by phone from Halifax. "We weren't expecting it."

She said Doherty was depressed about his decline in health, and had been making plans for an adventurous boat trip across the Atlantic.

"He was a very energetic, busy active person and it was hard for him to make that adjustment, I think," she said.

Arnold says the first time her mother heard Doherty on the radio it was him singing "California Dreamin'."

"My mother stood in the kitchen and cried," she said.

Doherty, who was married twice, is survived by his siblings Frances, Joe, Denise and Joan and children John, Emberly and Jessica. Both of his wives predeceased him.

Doherty's first child, Jessica Doherty Woods, said she expected that public memorials would be held in L.A. and Canada.

"John and Emberly and I are all very mindful that we've lost somebody but that he had a lot of people whose lives he touched and that they miss him too," she said from her home in Louisville, Ky.

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On the web:
www.dennydoherty.com