:max_bytes(150000):strip_icc():focal(749x0:751x2)/mama-cass-elliot-owen-043024-3-a6602051f61641429ac4f3d8ee2925a5.jpg "Mama Cass' Daughter Owen 'Didn't Even Know My Dad's Name' Until She Turned 19 (Exclusive) (1)")
For years, Mama Cass’ daughter Owen Elliot-Kugell had no idea who her biological father was. It wasn’t until she was 19 years old that learned his name: Chuck Day.
It’s one of the many surprising stories she tells in her new memoir, My Mama, Cass, out May 7.
After her mother, the legendary The Mamas & the Papas singer Cass Elliot died from a heart attack on July 29, 1974 when Owen was 7 years old, she was raised by her mom's sister, Leah Kunkel and her husband, Russ. While she didn't lack for a father figure, Owen says, “Growing up, I always had certain fantasies, one day my real dad would show up."
As Owen explains, back in the mid-'60s when Cass decided to have a child, “She was a rock star and she had enough money and she didn’t need a man to do it. Well, she needed a man to do it [but not a relationship].”
Cass always kept the father's identity a closely held secret. “Mostly for privacy,” says Owen. “Maybe she didn’t need him. Nor want him.”
:max_bytes(150000):strip_icc():focal(749x0:751x2)/Owen-Elliot-Kugell-mama-cass-funeral-043024-a4daeccd22ca4d9f8cddf196557fc101.jpg "Mama Cass' Daughter Owen 'Didn't Even Know My Dad's Name' Until She Turned 19 (Exclusive) (2)")
She put another name, that of her first husband, Jim Hendricks, on the birth certificate. Says Owen, “I always understood it was a platonic marriage and that it had been purely to keep him out of the draft.”
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But on the night of Owen’s 19th birthday, after a celebratory dinner, her mother’s former bandmate Michelle Phillips told her his name. Turns out, Michelle had spent the earlier part of that day filming a documentary with her former The Mamas & the Papas bandmates John Phillips and Denny Doherty.
“She had said ‘Gee, did we ever find out who Owen’s dad was?’" Owen recalls. "The two of them shot each other a knowing look and they told her Chuck Day. They knew his name and that’s all they had to go on.”
Michelle ended up putting a want-ad in various music magazines and found Day, a bassist who had once performed with Cass and was living in Marin County, Calif.
“She got me a plane ticket and said, 'Go meet him,'” says Owen.
“It was a surreal experience,” she recalls. “The second I saw him, I knew we shared DNA. He was a little uncomfortable. He was a perfect stranger telling me how much he loved me and it was the weirdest thing I’ve ever heard in my whole life.”
:max_bytes(150000):strip_icc():focal(749x0:751x2)/Owen-Elliot-Kugell-mama-cass-walk-of-fame-043024-0308d87a1f0948aebcda268fd9b212b2.jpg "Mama Cass' Daughter Owen 'Didn't Even Know My Dad's Name' Until She Turned 19 (Exclusive) (3)")
Still, she says, “It gave me closure. I knew I belonged to his DNA and there was a lot of healing in the end."
As she sees it, “I had four parental units. That’s how I worked it out. A mother and father who were the biological set. And I had a mom and dad [Leah and Russ Kunkel] who were the ones who actually did the work and who would say what I should or shouldn’t do. So I did not feel I was lacking in the dad department.”
It’s just one of the revelations in her new memoir. And after interviewing many of her mom's closest friends and writing the book, she says, “She’s been gone 50 years but I feel closer to her than ever.”
My Mama, Cass is out May 7 from Hachette Books and is available for preorder now, wherever books are sold.
