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The Cowsills are haunted by ghosts and good luck.
The Cowsills, a family of seven singers and musicians who are making a variety of music they call "conglomerate rock" famous across the nation, star in "A Family Thing," musical special to be colorcast on KUTV-2, Saturday, Nov. 23 at 7:30.
The good luck started haunting them late last year with the release of their first million-selling record, "The Rain, The Park and Other Things." Since then they have hit it big with albums entitled "The Cowsills," "We Can Fly" and the recent "Captain Sad and His Ship of Fools" and best-selling singles of "We Can Fly," "Indian Lake" and "Poor Baby." And the first single featuring solo by 12-year-old Johnny Cowsill, and October edition entitled "The Path of Love," also appears headed for the top of the charts.
The good luck started just in time. Bud Cowsills, father-founder of the group, had backed his faith in his family by borrowing $100,000 to get them moving up to professional status. Encountering only modest success, even Bud was ready to throw in the towel.
The Cowsills were down to their last penny when they etched their first big hit in 1967. They were about to lose the 27-room neo-Gothic "Munster Mansion" they owned in Newport, Rhode Island.
The ghostly portion of the haunting started in this same Rhode Island home, which formerly was owned by a sea-faring Captain McCormack.
"We don't really believe in ghosts," explained Barbara Cowsill, wife, mother and singer with the group. "But we had a lot of weird things happening without explanation; pipes banging, doors slamming, locked shutters flying open, pans rattling, the whole bit.
"Then a Ouija board told us we were haunted. So, as time went by, everything that happened around the house for no apparent reason we blamed on the ghost of Captain McCormack."
Now the Cowsills moved to where the action is, live in a Mediterranean-style mansion in the sea-side Los Angeles suburb of Santa Monica. Strange things still are happening Barbara reports, and the family is more-than-a-little convinced that Captain McCormack came West with them.
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