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Page 59:
Bernard Slade (creator/writer): When I was working in Canada I wrote a drama with music called The Big Coin Sound, which was about a vocal group. I came down to Los Angeles and one night I was watching the John Carson show and saw a family group called The Cowsills. I thought it would be a good idea for a television show, having a situation comedy centred on a family with music. The Sound of Music was very popular around that time. So I came up with the idea of a travelling family group.
The show was originally called The Family Business and later changed to The Partridge Family. I went to school in England and played on the soccer team. The centre-half was a guy named Partridge, which, as it turned out, was not that uncommon a name. But at the time I thought it was unusual and it seemed fitting.
Page 62:
In the pilot, Shirley, playing a widow, hear a racket in the garage one day. It's her five wholesome but high-spirited kids, who are forming a band. The kids decide to get her to join their band. In reality The Cowsills, consisting of a mother and her six children, had, in 1967 and 1968, recorded such hits as Indian Lake, Poor Baby, and The Rain, the Park and the Other Things. In the proposed show, the family records a number. The smart-aloeck middle son (played by Danny Bonaduce) forces a hapless agent (Dave Madden) to listen to their music by shoving a tape recorder under his bathroom stall. Bernard Slade, the creator of the show, thought that scene was so funny that it helped to make the pilot a success.
Pages 68-69:
Wes Farrell: The project was offered to me because we had success that paralleled The Partridge Family in several ways with The Cowsills and Every Mother's Son. We knew how to put Top 40 projects together. The image matching the music was the name of the game. Larry Utall showed me the pilot and the rest is history. You had a young guy named David Cassidy who had star image written all over him.
. . .
. . . He'd produced records for Johnny Maestro and the Brooklyn Bridge and The Cowsills, which is, I'm sure, why Larry Utall hired him. A no-brainer, right?
Page 72:
Tony Romeo, who wrote I Think I Love You, had previously written some of The Cowsills' most memorable songs, including Indian Lake and Poor Baby. . . .
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