MISSISSAUGA, Ont. Jan 20, 2007 (AP)—(via ABC) Denny Doherty, one-quarter of the 1960s folk-rock group the Mamas and the Papas, known for their soaring harmony on hits like “California Dreamin'” and “Monday, Monday,” died Friday at 66. His sister Frances Arnold said the singer-songwriter died at his home in Mississauga, a city just west of Toronto, after a short illness. He had suffered kidney problems following surgery last month and had been put on dialysis, Arnold said.
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Doherty made a solo album in 1974 and achieved a bit of immortality by both playing the Harbormaster and voicing all the characters for the children’s TV series “Theodore Tugboat.”
I am taken, momentarily, with the idea that so many from the sixties have died early. hard living, perhaps, I don’t know.
Musically speaking, I am convinced that Bones Howe was as much an influence on the sound of the Mama’s and the Papas, as anything else. Consider the sound of the other groups that Howe famously produced, which were so similar in terms of harmonic content etc.. The Fifth Dimension, The Association, The Turtles, Jan and Dean, Don and Phil Everly, and so on. That’s not intended as a slight on the talents of such as Doherty, but rather a recognition of them. Howe had a tendency to collect the brightest and the best talent to him. That the Mamas and the Papas were on that list strikes me as placing them as peers with the brightest and the best of the time.
And by the way, I wasn’t aware he lived so close to me here in Rochester. In terms of radio, Mississauga is very nicely within earshot.
