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They got their start playing frat parties at Brown University and doing gigs at school dances and church gatherings in Newport. They covered Beatles songs on Bannister's Wharf fitting given they hoped to be the next Fab Four: Bill, Bob, Barry and John.
Later, three more family members, including their mother, would round out the fresh-faced clan - The Cowsills - whose harmonies would climb to the top of the pop music charts.
Surviving members of the group that enjoyed a meteoric rise in the 1960s serving as the inspiration for "The Partridge Family" are scheduled to perform today in Providence.
The performance will follow the premiere of a new documentary about the band's rise and fall, "Family Band: The Cowsills Story," at the Rhode Island International Film Festival.
Filmmaker Louise Palanker says the film is a story of tragedy and triumph - of a family that seemed flawless on the surface but grappled with a physically and emotionally abusive father and a mother who chronically felt she came up short.
Like The Beatles before them, the Cowsills went on the "The Ed Sullivan Show." They did "American Bandstand" and Johnny Carson's "The Tonight Show."
Rick Bellaire, founder of the Rhode Island Popular Music Archive, which has compiled a history and discography of the Cowsills, remembers the group playing locally before it went big. "They were extremely popular. They did not at the time get a lot of critical acclaim because they were considered a bubble gum group," he said.
But the band broke up in the early 1970s almost as quickly as it had risen. There had been clashes with father Bud, who managed the band and its finances - badly, by all accounts - and eventually kicked Bill, the lead singer, out on the spot.
Richard "Biggy" Korn, a restaurateur in Newport who helped The Cowsill get their start and traveled on the road with them in the early days, called Bud "stifling."
"He entirely took control over them," said Korn. "The big crime of it was that there was so much talent, and it was never allowed to come out. People would not let them be who they were."
Bud was in charge, and the record label wanted one image and one image alone: that of an all-American, spit-polished band.
Even after earning a fortune - Korn estimates it was anywhere from $10 million to $20 million - the family was left broke in a matter of years, Korn said.
The Cowsills mother, Barbara, died in 1985, Bud in 1992, Barry would later die in Hurricane Katrina in 2006.
On the day they were to hold a memorial service for Barry in Newport, family members learned of the death of Bill, who had struggled with heroin addiction and other illnesses and lived in Canada.
Barry's and Bill's deaths served as a catalyst for them to make music once again, according to Palanker. "They felt like they really needed to be together as often as possible, and that was the best way to do it.
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