NEW YORK - Hardly a week goes by in the pop music record industry without the launching of a new group heralded with a succession of adjectives that would make any soap company ad copy-writer blush.
Since the arrival of The Cowsills, however, journalists and press agents alike have had to reach way down into their bag of verbal tricks to find a simple phrase to describe this multifaceted many-talented group.
TO BEGIN WITH, they are a real family — named Cowsill — and are related by blood from the father, who conceived the idea for this combo to the youngest member, 8-year-old Sue, his pretty singing-playing daughter.
In between there are Barbara, the mother; Bill, who's 19; Bobby, 18; Dick, 18 the last two are twins1: Paul, 16; Barry, 13; Johnny, 10.
THEY ARE among the foremost pop music groups in the business today, with a one million-selling single. The Rain, the Park and Other Things," and an album simply titled, "The Cowsills." which is
approaching the million-dollar mark In sales. Their second single, "We Can Fly," released Jan. 2, is already on its way up the charts.
THEY HAVE BEEN signed for an additional 10 appearances on the Ed Sullivan TV show over the coming year, and the mail CBS has received on their first two appearances is nothing short of astounding. Among other merchandising plans now being worked out are a Suzy Cowsill doll, a Cowsills comic book, a Cowsills game, Cowsills guitars, amplifiers, basses, and numerous other
things designed to meet the sudden public demand, while filling the Cowsill family coffers.
AND IT ALL happened just in time, for the mortgage on the Cowsills' homestead, a 27-room
mansion in their hometown of Newport, R.I., had come due . . . and Bud Cowsill, the
father, who had borrowed in excess of $100,000 to get this family moving up to professional
status, was just about ready to throw in the towel when he met manager-mentor Leonard Stogel, the man who made the group's success materialize.
ALL OF THIS has happened in the last six months. More recently they played to packed houses in their two Town Hall concert dates Dec. 28; and they made a Jan. 26 appearance at Chicago's Civic Opera House, their first midwest engagement.
On Monday the NBC "Today" show will devote a full hour to the Cowsills as performers and
personalities.
SCHLATTER and Friendly, the TV producers, have a Cowsills family situation-comedy
TV show in the works; and Sue Cowsill (the 8-year-old) has been approached to star in a remake
of some of the old Shirley Temple pictures, a natural for this singing, dancing, acting pixie.
The nine Cowsills may be as American as apple pie — but they're also as hip as the Beatles, as "down" as the Jefferson Airplane and as Exciting as a Hollywood movie premiere.
THEY'RE CLEAN-CUT kids who somehow never "revelled" — perhaps because 20-year
Navy veteran Bud shares the same meaningful values about life as his family. There is no
generation gap: they "voted" that Mom should stay with them and perform as lead female
singer.
|