Canada: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 in Canada on Friday aged 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.
The group burst on the national scene in 1966 with the top 10 smash California Dreamin'. The other members were John Phillips, the group's chief songwriter; his wife, Michelle; and another female vocalist, Cass Elliot. During the mid-1960s, the catchy songs and close harmonies of the Mamas and the Papas were seldom out of the hit parade on both sides of the Atlantic.
Canadian-born Doherty was the group's male lead singer. His colleague Michelle Phillips (now the sole surviving member) once described his voice as that of a "psychedelic Frank Sinatra".
Doherty was born in Halifax, Nova Scotia, the son of an ironworker and a "housewife and mystic", as he once described his mother.
He made his first public appearance at the age of 15 singing the Pat Boone hit Love Letters in the Sandat amateur night at the local skating rink. By the late 1950s, he had shifted allegiance to the burgeoning folk song movement.
The group moved to New York, the centre of the folk revival in the early 1960s. In Greenwich Village, he met Cass Elliott with whom he was later to form the Mamas and the Papas. He was married twice but both wives predeceased him. Two daughters and a son survive him.
- (AP, Guardian service)