Music Icon's Death 51 Years Ago Created the Biggest Misconception in Rock & Roll History

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Music Icon's Death 51 Years Ago Created the Biggest Misconception in Rock & Roll History originally appeared on Parade.
Rock and roll history is filled with tragic tales of young musicians dying at the height of their success, and many of these sad stories have been twisted over the years, spawning countless conspiracy theories and outright lies. But over half a century later, the death of Cass Elliot — also known as Mama Cass — stands out as one of the most sensationalized ever, and her memory is still plagued by widely-spread falsehoods and gossip.
As one of the members of the pioneering folk rock group the Mamas and the Papas, Elliot was famous for her powerful voice and sense of humor. Unfortunately, she also dealt with ongoing criticism for her weight. When she died on July 29, 1974, at the age of 32, she'd just played a sold-out show at the London Palladium. While the autopsy stated her cause of death as a heart attack, rumors spread about the singer choking to death on a ham sandwich...and stubbornly persisted for decades.
What really happened to Cass Elliot?
As Elliot's daughter, Owen Elliot-Kugell, told the BBC in 2024, her mother didn't choke on a ham sandwich at all, even though there was one in the room at the time of her death.
"There was a ham sandwich, but she didn't eat it and she didn't choke on it. So enough with the jokes," Elliot-Kugell said.
"It's beyond frustrating, almost immeasurable," she continued. "Even as a little girl, when I was hanging out with my friends at school, they didn't know who my mom was, but I would go home to have playdates with some of these kids and it was kind of frequent that one of their parents would make a comment to me like, 'Hey, did your mom really die choking on a ham sandwich?'"
"It bothered me because it was such a horrible story, and I knew that it wasn't true. And it just felt so cruel to have a rumor like that perpetuated. It tortured me," Elliot-Kugell added.
According to writer Lexi Pandell, who explored Elliot's death in an episode of her podcast You Must Remember This, even the autopsy doesn't tell the whole story.
'[Elliot's] official cause of death was labeled as 'fatty myocardial degeneration due to obesity' — but that would still be a shocking cause of death for such a young woman and has largely been refuted,' Pandell told Vogue in 2021.
'From the research I've done and the doctors I spoke to, it seems the most likely cause of death was extreme dieting in combination with long-term substance abuse,' she added, going on to explain that "confronting the possibility that Cass may have died due to extreme dieting challenges our idealization of diet culture.' (While Elliot had used drugs in the past, there were no substances in her system at the time of her death.)
As Elliot-Kugell explained, the fact that her mother "pursued and persevered until she made it" despite her weight struggles is an important part of her legacy.
"She knew when she was a teenager that she wanted to be a performer and told everybody that she was going to be the most famous fat girl that ever lived," she said. "She had that forethought of knowledge as a child. I think that's pretty cool. I think that's really cool."Music Icon's Death 51 Years Ago Created the Biggest Misconception in Rock & Roll History first appeared on Parade on Jul 29, 2025
This story was originally reported by Parade on Jul 29, 2025, where it first appeared.