The Cowsills

Serving as the actual basis for the popular television program The Partridge Family, the Cowsills assembled teen brothers Bill, Bob, Barry, John, Susan, and Paul together with mother Barbara to rank among the leading pop attractions of the late 1960s. They achieved that status through a string of successes such as “The Rain, the Park and Other Things” and “Hair,” delivered via their heavenly vocal blends and bright, buoyant melodies. Although their wholesome presentation and sugary promotional approach kept them from seeming especially cool at the height of their fame, the Cowsills proved themselves outstanding harmony vocalists and skilled players, a point made clear by the excellent 1994 anthology The Best of the Cowsills. At the same time Bill and Bob Cowsill demonstrated real songwriting gifts and later developed into accomplished producers, most notably on the final-era albums II x II (1970) and On My Side (1971). After the band dissolved in the early 1970s, the members reconvened during the 1990s and returned in 2022 with the assured comeback album Rhythm of the World, which fused their signature vocal style to a more seasoned take on their melodic approach.

The Cowsills began when Bill and Bob Cowsill, still children, launched their singing careers by performing Everly Brothers material. After their father, Navy man William “Bud” Cowsill, supplied them with guitars, the pair added younger brothers Barry on bass and John on drums. As Beatlemania took hold, the four teenagers started playing school dances and church gatherings around their hometown of Newport, Rhode Island. They soon secured a steady weekend engagement at the local venue Bannisters Wharf and, in 1967, cut the single “All I Really Wanta Be Is Me” for the Joda label. The record made little impact, yet an appearance on NBC’s The Today Show led the group to Mercury Records, where three additional singles also failed to register.

Mercury producer Artie Kornfeld nevertheless believed in the Cowsills’ hit potential and arranged an independent session. He persuaded the siblings’ mother, Barbara, to add her voice, and the result was the memorable “The Rain, the Park and Other Things.” Capitalizing on the family’s wholesome image, Kornfeld placed the track with MGM, which released it in the fall of 1967; it climbed to number two on the national charts and sold more than a million copies. The Cowsills’ self-titled debut album followed, and the title song from 1968’s We Can Fly became their second hit. By then sister Susan and brother Paul had joined the lineup. “Indian Lake” reached the Top Ten later that year, and in 1969 the title song from the rock musical Hair gave the group its highest-charting single. Around the same period Columbia Pictures sent screenwriters to study the Cowsills’ everyday routine for a prospective series; although the project never materialized, it later inspired the fictionalized The Partridge Family.

By the time The Partridge Family debuted on television in 1970, the Cowsills’ popularity had already begun to fade, and after the 1971 release of On My Side the group disbanded. That year Bill Cowsill, briefly considered as a touring replacement for Brian Wilson in the Beach Boys, issued the solo album Nervous Breakthrough, yet the siblings remained largely inactive musically for the rest of the decade. In the late 1970s Bob, John, Susan, and Paul recorded original songs with producer Chuck Plotkin, but those tracks stayed unreleased. Barbara Cowsill died on January 31, 1985. During the 1990s the children recovered some of their earlier visibility: Barry pursued a solo career, Bill formed the country band the Blue Shadows, and Susan joined the Continental Drifters, the New Orleans-via-Los Angeles supergroup that also included her husband, former dB Peter Holsapple, and ex-Bangle Vicki Peterson. In 1994 the “core four”—Bob, John, Susan, and Paul—contributed the new track “Is It Any Wonder” to the Yellow Pills, Vol. 1 compilation, followed by the studio album Global in 1998.

When Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans on August 29, 2005, Susan and her family had already left the city, but brother Barry, then living there as well, had not. Susan last spoke with him by phone on September 1. The family searched for four months until his body was found and identified on December 28. Another loss came in 2006 when Bill died in February at age 58 following ongoing health problems.

A documentary titled Family Band: The Cowsills Story premiered at the Rhode Island International Film Festival in 2010 and later aired on Showtime. The film renewed interest in the group, prompting Bob, Susan, and Paul to lead a revived version of the Cowsills that performed occasional club dates and joined several summer editions of the Turtles’ “Happy Together” Tour. The new configuration featured Bob’s son Ryan Cowsill on keyboards, Paul’s son Brendon Cowsill on guitars, and Susan’s second husband Russ Broussard on drums. (John Cowsill has separately toured as a member of the Beach Boys, playing keyboards and drums.) In 2022 the reunited Cowsills issued their first album in twenty-four years, Rhythm of the World, on Omnivore Recordings.