Saying Goodbye to a Canadian Ledgend:Denny Doherty

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 66. The 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 rich, meticulous harmonies that could be tinged with darkness, the Mamas and the Papas where one of the most popular and influential American bands of the era between the Beatles’ arrival and Woodstock. Even for later generations like mine who missed their brilliance, their enduring hits, like “California Dreamin’,” “Monday, Monday” and “Dedicated to the One I Love,” that mixed the gentle jangle of folk with a rock backbeat and sweet, layered pop vocals, will forever be remembered.

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 lights the coals
He knows I’m gonna stay

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 Mama 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.

In 1993 Doherty took on not just the VO role of the Harbour Master but all the VO roles in Theodore Tugboat, a children's television show chronicling the "lives" of vessels in a busy harbour loosely based upon Halifax Harbour.

For more of his early solo career in Halifax and Montreal please click on the title link.

Later,
Kenaz