|
Barbara Cowsill, 40 and a mother of seven, said she has earned every wrinkle.
"I literally came straight out of the kitchen after 20 years of diapers and started singing with my family," she said in a phone interview from the Cowsills' second home in Santa Monica, Calif. The first, in Newport, R.I., is ivy-covered and has 22 rooms.
Well scrubbed, the Cowsills could be considered unique in a time of scruffy-looking recording stars. They made it despite their appearance.
"The undergrund groups call us the Kool-Aid Kinds," Mama Cowsill said, "We just happen to dig milk.
"My boys just don't like the hippie look, the long hair. They still respect the true underground musicians.
"We felt with all the long hair groups today there had to be an opposite, too. We provide the balance."
You won't hear the Cowsills singing lyrics that allude to drugs and sex.
"I think suggestive lyrics are terrible," said Mrs. Cowsill. "Music is beauty and that kind of lyric is not."
The singing family consists of mother; Bill, 20; Bob, 19; Paul, 16; Barry, 14; Johnny, 12 and Suzie, 9. Father, Bud, retired from the Navy after 20 years, is the group coordinator. There is another son, Dick - Bob's twin - in Da Nang, Vietnam. He wasn't interested in singing.
The group will perform in a concert with Eddy Arnold a week from tomorrow at Public Hall. They are also booked for a concert Dec. 14 and 15 at Euclid Jurior High School, but Mrs. Cowsil didn't know who was sponsoring them. "The school couldn't afford us," she said.
The Cowsills will star in their first TV special, Saturday, Nov. 23. This is a pilot film for a proposed TV series for next season. There will be another TV special in January and appearances on the Jonathan Winters Show, Hollywood Palace and Operation Entertainment.
Their first record, "The Rain, The Park and Other Things," was a million-seller. They will have a new album out - "Best of the Cowsills" - and a single, "Candy Kid," a Christmas song, by the end of November.
The family has had no formal musical training.
"The only singing I did was singing the babies to sleep," Mrs. Cowsill said. "Bill taught Bob singing and musical instruments and they taught the others. Bud always knew the children had a natural gift and never denied them musical instruments when we really couldn't afford them."
Those stories about the family's poorhouse days before September 1967 are all true.
"We had a great house (the one in Newport), but no furniture," Mrs. Cowsill said. "We had a 40-foot living room filled with musical instruments. All we had were beds, a pool table, ping pong table and kitchen table, but we always figured someday we would have furniture.
"After our first appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show I was thrilled because I could get a new washer. I had needed one for 10 years, but the clothes and instruments for the act came first.
"At one time the oil company cut off our delivery. They carried us for so long, I didn't blame them. We had eight fireplaces and we needed fuel. We had old bedroom dressers so the boys chopped them up for firewood."
And now Mrs. Cowsill has a maid.
"I don't know what to do with myself now," she said. "I just walk back and forth in and out doors."
|
