Barry Cowsill Has Passed On

[Cheryl Harrell]

I had on my car radio on WKBW the big oldies channel out of Buffalo, NY which we can get on the radio here in VA at nite & sometimes during the day too & is a great station. They announced on there about Barrys passing & played Indian Lake in tribute. It was a sad shock as I had been keeping up every so often on line to see if he was alive or found yet after finding out about him missing & had been praying for him & the family.

I'm not really a Cowsills fan but I do like them, think they're a great group & nice family & remember them from the 60's & have a few 45 singles of them. I once discovered their website & every once in a great while would check it out to see what they were up to. I figuresome of you folks might remember them & might be interested in knowing. I noticed both he & his brother John are nice looking guys. Our condolences to the family...

http://www.rollingstone.com/news/sto...14&has-player\
=unknown

Cowsill Found Dead in N.O.
Barry Cowsill, member of real-life Partridge Family, died in Katrina's
wake
The body of Barry Cowsill, one of the singing Cowsills, the family
band that inspired the Partridge Family, was discovered on December
28th on a wharf in New Orleans. Local authorities believe Cowsill, 51,
died in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, which hit the city on
August 29th. Cowsill reportedly left phone messages for his sister
Susan on September 1st, and was not heard from again.

Billed as "America's First Family of Music," the well-scrubbed
Cowsills helped make flower-power music palatable to the mainstream
during their brief run in the late 1960s. They had two Number Two
hits, "The Rain, the Park and Other Things" and the title track to the
hit rock musical Hair. They were nearly reality-television pioneers,
as well: The filming of their daily life together was briefly
considered for a TV program, before producers decided to fictionalize
the story as The Partridge Family.

Newport, Rhode Island's Cowsills were formed in the early Sixties when
their father, Bud, gave his two oldest boys, Bill and Bob, guitars.
Barry, born in 1954, took up the bass, and younger brother John became
the drummer. Later, the group would be joined by brother Paul, on
keyboards, and their kid sister Susan, on vocals. Their mother Barbara
performed with the group as well.

The four original band members recorded their first single, "All I
Really Wanta Be Is Me," in 1965. Playing a weekly residency at a
Newport lounge called Bannisters Wharf, the group was discovered by a
producer for NBC's Today show. Their television performance led to a
contract with Mercury Records, which recorded a string of singles to
little notice. Producer Artie Kornfeld brought the group a song he
co-wrote, "The Rain, the Park and Other Things," and he convinced
Barbara Cowsill to sing with her children. That song, a dreamy,
heavily orchestrated pop nugget, became a smash for MGM in 1967.

In the wake of the single's success, Paul and Susan Cowsill were soon
added to the group. "We Can Fly" reached Number Twenty-One in 1968,
followed by "Indian Lake," a California pop song influenced by the
Beach Boys and the Mamas and the Papas, which made Number Ten later
that same year. By now a pop sensation, the Cowsills hosted their own
television special and made appearances for Ed Sullivan and Johnny Carson.

The group had one last moment of glory in early 1969, when their
recording of "Hair" spent thirteen weeks in the Top Forty. But despite
the success of The Partridge Family, which debuted in 1970, the
Cowsills' 1971 album On My Side yielded no hits; the group would soon
dissolve amid financial and personal difficulties.

Bill Cowsill, who was once considered as a possible replacement for
Brian Wilson in the Beach Boys' touring band, was the first family
member to release a solo album, 1971's Nervous Breakthrough. Some of
the siblings eventually fell out of the music business; Bob, John,
Susan and Paul briefly reunited in the late Seventies, recording a set
of songs that went unreleased. It was the first of the Cowsills'
periodic comebacks, most recently in 1998, when they released an
Internet-only album. Barbara Cowsill died of emphysema in Tempe,
Arizona in 1985.

Through the years the Cowsills retained some ties to their native New
England. In 1988 Barry contributed a cover version of "Everybody's Got
Something to Hide Except Me and My Monkey" for an album called Boston
Does the Beatles. In 2004 the Cowsills reunited to play at Fenway Park
before a Red Sox-Yankees playoff game. They sang the national anthem
and "Hair."

During the 1990s Barry and Susan both became involved with the New
Orleans music community. Susan joined her then-husband, former dBs
frontman Peter Holsapple, ex-Bangle Vicki Peterson and others in the
L.A.-New Orleans band the Continental Drifters. Barry Cowsill released
an album, Barry Cowsill: As Is, in 1998. He was said to have been
preparing to record another album in New Orleans at the time of his death.

JAMES SULLIVAN

Posted Jan 06, 2006 12:00 AM

This pic I saw of his online that went with the article, I thought was a cute one of him...

[MikeLutton]

hello just wondering what does this have to do with chico and the man.cause i dont remember him being on the show just wondering.

signed Mike

[Ireneparalegal]

Originally Posted by MikeL

hello just wondering what does this have to do with chico and the man.cause i dont remember him being on the show just wondering.

signed Mike

same here

[Danisel331]

It has nothing to do with Chico folks. She was just reporting.

[Pitooey]

The reason why Cheryl is reporting this on this site is because the majority of Chico fans here are an older 60's, 70's kind of crowd and we speak about everything to do with the 60's & 70's and beyond. We've spoken about The Monkees, Partridge family, Starsky & Hutch etc. We may love Chico but we also love speaking about other people.

When Cheryl wrote about Barry I could relate to that era. This is why the Chico and the Man family here has continued to flourish. This is a close Chico family here.

You go Cheryl!

[Cheryl Harrell]

Thanks ya'll. Didn't mean to confuse anyone. The reason I mentioned it on here even tho it has nothing to do with CATM is some of us here were around in the 60's & 70's when the Cowsills were out & I thought they might be interested in knowing in case they liked him...

[hue_mee]

Thanks for the heads up everyone. I do remember the Cowsill's although I was very young. I always loved the song they sang of "Hair"