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A hit-making MGM recording group that will appear at the music festival July 11 just also happens to be a family enterprise.
The group is The Cowsills and they will be a featured part of The B. J. Thomas Show.
It was just three years ago next month that the Cowsills exploded into the national musical consciousness with their first MGM album, “The Cowsills,” which contained the group’s first million seller, “The Rain, the Park and Other Things.”
With a name like “The Cowsills,” they had to be good.
They are, which explains in the simplest terms the survival of a family group named, “The Cowsills” pitted against the established image of what pop groups should be, the Beatles and the Rolling Stones.
The Cowsills aren’t just performers, they are a closely knit family that sings, plays and stays together.
There’s Bud and Barbara Cowsill, the parents; Bill Cowsill, the eldest son; Bob Cowsill, guitarist; Paul Cowsill, until recently the football playing member; Dick Cowsill, who is winding up his tour of duty in Vietnam; Barry Cowsill, the personality member of the group; John Cowsill, the youngest male member and Susan Cowsill, the only girl.
Bob started in on the guitar at 7, joining older brother Bill and they performed as a duo; Barry, at 7, reached for the bongos, later switching to bass guitar, having taught John a single drum beat which sparked him to become the youngest drummer ever to play on a hit record.
Paul only recently switched from backstage to the performing aspect of Cowsill life, debuting as keyboard man on the Cowsills’ second million-seller “Hair.”
Barbara found herself conned into joining her progeny for “The Rain, The Park and Other Things;” and Susan convinced “the boys” to accept her as/one of the Cowsills in time for the “We Can Fly” album.
Bill and Bob cut their teeth as record producers on the “We Can Fly” single and album, and Bob soloed in this capacity for the first time on “The Prophecy of Daniel and John the Divine.”
He writes material which the group performs both in concert and on record, and Paul is now finding composing even more of a challenge than his previous passion, football.
The Cowsills, constantly on the move, recently made a big move from Halidon Hall, the run-down 22-room mansion in Newport, R.I. where it all began, to a sprawling Spanish-style house in Santa Monica which should help them to get into the spirit of the Old Monterey Bicentennial.
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