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Many acts play the "Hollywood Palace," but the "Today" show? Such appearnaces are few and far between.
Rarer still are Today specials, and these are traditionally built around the likes of Beatrice Lillie, Noel Coward or Richard Rodgers. The big brass of show business.
But on Monday, (7-9 a.m.) Today will pay an hour-long tribute to the newly-arrived Cowsills.
The Cowsills made their national television debut on Today in September 1964 after a writer heard them sing.
"I remember it well," says Bud Cowsill, a 20-year Navy man now retired, who organized the group featuring his wife and five of their seven children.
"A nice young fellow came up to me one night, said he was from the Today show, and asked me how we would like to appear on the program. I told him we would be happy to, of course! We were really struggling in those days.
"But then I forgot all about it until the phone rang a couple of days later. It was NBC in New York and they really did want us for the show."
The Cowsills have sold a million records of their hit song, "The Rain, The Park and Other Things," and played two of 10 contracted engagements this season on The Ed Sullivan Show.
The on-stage Cowsill family consists of Susie, eight, her brothers, Bill, 20, Bob, 18, Barry, 13, Johnny, 11, and the their mother, Barbara. Susie and Barbara are new recruits, having joined the act only a few months ago.
The two older boys are college students and the younger kids attend a professional children's school in New York.
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