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The American Dairy Association loved them, families loved them, and their manager loved them all the way to the bank and back. They were the Cowsills.
When they first arrived on the music scene in 1967 there was suspicion that the Cowsills weren’t really a family. Even their name sounded like something out of Disney. Their critics thought of them as a group of strangers carefully matched personally and vocally, who had been brought together from all over the United States by clever promoters to do a stunning “family” act. Of course that was a joke, because the family resemblance down to the last kiss-curl and tooth gap came from their Dad, who didn’t sing, but took care of things, and Mini-Mom Barbara who did sing, right down to the boys, and sister Susan.
Actually, the Cowsills were in an old tradition of family rock. Their sound was clean rock with plenty of Beach Boys harmonizing.
Anyone looking for revelation in new music back in the late sixties should forget about the Cowsills. Because they were indeed a family act, consisting originally of six brothers, John, the youngest, Robert, Barry, William, Paul and Richard who was replaced by Susan in 1967.
They were organized by their father and manager, Bud Cowsill, an ex-Navy officer who ran up a $100,000 in debts trying to establish the group. The family hailed from Newport, R.I. where they recorded their first record, called, “All I Really Wanna Be Is Me” on Johnny Nash’s Joda label. It didn’t sell very well, but as most first ventures, it created some waves and the group received an offer from M-G-M Records and began recording for them in 1967.
The first release from the label was “The Rain, the Park and Other Things” which went straight to number one on the charts. The Cowsills had arrived a couple of years before the Jacksons and the Osmonds. In fact, it is rumored that they established the original idea for the popular Partridge Family TV Show which started in 1970.
For a couple years, they placed high on the charts with their idols. The Beatles, and The Monkees and the hits continued – “We Can Fly,” “In Need of A Friend,” “Indian Lake,” and the odd-ball record they are most remembered for “Hair,” the song about long-haired hippies sang by the sugar-coated short-haired family.
Maybe some of you remember seeing the Cowsills perform in La Crosse as I do back in the early ‘70s at the old Mary E. Sawyer Auditorium. I recall the show as a delightful escape for two hours. Now the sounds that echoed through the Mary E Sawyer are gone, the Cowsills have faded from popularity, and perhaps we’ve seen the last of the family entertainers.
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