mamalion

Mama Lion was a blues-rock band formed by Canadian producer Neil Merryweather and Los Angeles-born singer-songwriter Lynn Carey. The duo had previously released a record called “Vacuum Cleaner” but Mama Lion was more in tune with the then very-much-in-fashion blues rock style of Led Zeppelin. Like a female Robert Plant, Carey didn’t sing so much as she shouted or yelled her lyrics. Some have compared her singing to a deeper voiced Janis Joplin and this seems about right. She was what you might call a “belter.”

Today Mama Lion are remembered, if they are remembered at all, primarily for the gatefold of the Preserve Wildlife LP sleeve (see above) which featured the rather amply-endowed Carey nursing a lion cub. As a bit of cult movie trivia, it was Carey who provided the vocals for Dolly Reed’s character in Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, with Carey co-writing several of the songs the “Carrie Nations” sang in the film. (Considering that Carey went on to become a Penthouse Pet (NSFW), it strikes me as odd that breast-obsessed Meyer didn’t cast the, er, pneumatic Carey herself in BVD!)

Below, Dolly Reed lip-syncing to Lynn Carey’s vocal for “Find It” in Beyond the Valley of the Dolls: