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What did you need to be a folk group? People who could sing, a guitar and, if you're lucky, a banjo.
You had a banjo your price went up. We didn't have a banjo. We didn't even have a price, but after about a
year of slogging it out in the clubs in Montreal and Toronto, we made it to New York and got an agent.
Hello world ! Flat rock ! He got us a record deal with Mitch Miller. He was the head of Columbia Records
and the star of one of the hottest shows on TV, "Sing Along With Mitch". They changed our name to
The Halifax Three, got us a banjo player and found us our first , and only, "hit" . . .
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The Man Who Wouldn't Sing Along With Mitch
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The Halifax Three
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Believe it or not, that was a regional hit in New York City. But, face it, The Halifax Three were doomed.
We ended up broke, living on credit at a roach palace called The Albert Hotel and singing for baskets in
Greenwich Village. Singing for baskets ? It's like passing the hat. Oh, there were clubs in the Village
that paid . They just didn't pay The Halifax Three. There was Gerde's Folk City and groups like
The Journeymen: that was John Phillips, Scott McKenzie and Dick Wiesman, they played Gerde's.
And then there was The Bitter End.
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I was walking down Bleecker Street one night and this sound was coming out of the Bitter End - right through
the brick walls. Cass Elliot and The Big Three. Cass Elliot. Her real name was Ellen Naomi Cohen. I think
she got Cass was from a Broadway comedian - Peggy Cass and Elliot was from a high school friend who died
and Cass took the name to remember him by. Everybody thought Cass was short for Cassandra. Cass didn't mind
that - that was right out of Greek mythology. Very mysterious. See Cassandra was cursed with second sight.
Cursed because, no one ever believed in her prophecies.
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The first thing you noticed about Cass was her face. It was an amazing face: fast and funny and beautiful. She was a big, eat the world, pass the bourbon, soft kind of woman who came to New York to make it on Broadway, but to quote Cass: "There wasn't much call for a three hundred pound ingenue", and when Barbara Streisand started showing up at the same auditions, Cass started singing the blues.
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