Songfacts®:

• "Dream A Little Dream Of Me" is a widely recorded standard originally published in 1931. When Cass Elliot recorded it in 1968, it became her signature song and the best-known version. It was written by the famous lyricist Gus Kahn with music by two lesser-known composers: Fabian Andre and Wilbur Schwandt.
• Cass Elliot was a member of The Mamas & the Papas, who were on the verge of breaking up when she recorded this song with backing vocals from her bandmates. The idea came from the other Mama, Michelle Phillips. As she explained to NPR, Phillips met one of the song's composers, Fabian Andre, when she was 6 years old. When the band was rehearsing, they got word that Andre had died from a fall down an elevator shaft. This sparked the memory of her meeting him, and they decided to record his song.
  
  At the time, The Mamas & the Papas were in a dispute with their label, Dunhill, but Cass Elliot had a solo deal with them. The song was released as a single credited to "Mama Cass with The Mamas & the Papas," but also included on her debut solo album (also titled Dream A Little Dream Of Me) credited to her alone. Soon after it was released, The Mamas & the Papas announced their split.
• The song was right in the strike zone for Cass Elliot, who had a huge voice and could belt out tunes like singers from the '30s who had to do it in theaters. She loved Broadway but fell into folk music because that was all the rage when she moved to New York City from a suburb of Baltimore.
• The musicians on this song were many of the same West Coast session pros (later known as "The Wrecking Crew") who backed The Mamas & the Papas on songs like California Dreamin'. Here's the lineup:
  
  Keyboards – Larry Knechtel
  Bass – Joe Osborn
  Drums – Hal Blaine
  
  In addition to Cass' bandmates Denny Doherty, John Phillips and Michelle Phillips, Jill Gibson and Scott McKenzie also sang backup. McKenzie, who had a hit with "San Francisco (Be Sure To Wear Flowers In Your Hair)," was good friends with John Phillips.
• The song opens and closes with the sound of a radio tuning in a station, with Cass' vocal sounding tinny at first, as if it's coming from the speaker. This harkens back to the way many listeners heard the song when it was playing in the early '30s.
• Cass Elliot had by far the most successful solo career of The Mamas & the Papas, although it wasn't anywhere near what she achieved with the group. "Dream A Little Dream Of Me" was her biggest hit, but decades later her 1969 song "Make Your Own Kind Of Music," just a minor hit at the time, got a lot of attention when it was used in the TV series Dexter and Lost, and started trending on TikTok.
• To promote the single, Dunhill Records placed ads in trade magazines showing Elliot lying naked in a bed of daisies, a shocking image at a time when there was no such thing as a plus-size model. According to her daughter Owen, who became her biographer, Cass "was determined to be the most famous fat girl that ever lived, and she absolutely did that."