Susan Cowsill was 7 when she joined the Cowsills in 1966. She's on tour with them now

Miami Herald

14-07-2025

SAN DIEGO - Susan Cowsill stands out in more ways than one on the 2025 Happy Together Tour.
She is the only woman artist in this year's lineup of the annual tour. It features Little Anthony and the current iterations of the Turtles, Jay and the Americans, Gary Puckett & The Union Gap, the Vogues and the Cowsills, the group with which Susan Cowsill rose to fame in the second half of the 1960s.
At 66, she is the youngest featured musician on this year's tour. Little Anthony is 84, Gary Puckett is 82.
Cowsill is the only Happy Together Tour participant who is also a key member of another veteran band - the proudly rootsy Continental Drifters - which appeals to a younger and almost entirely different audience than any other Happy Together Tour acts.
And she is the only one who, as an in-demand studio musician, has sung on albums by such diverse artists as Nanci Griffith, Hootie & the Blowfish, Dwight Twilley, Giant Sand, Red Kross and such Louisiana-bred acts as the Radiators and Zachary Richard.
"I was a 'singer/entertainer' up until I was 30, which is when I learned to play guitar," said Cowsill, speaking from her New Orleans home. "Then, I learned to be a musician and a songwriter, and that changed everything for me. It added to my already rich and wonderful life musical life."
Cowsill's musical life began unusually early by almost any standards.
She was barely seven in 1966 when she joined her family's band, the Cowsills, which served as the real-life inspiration for the hit 1960s TV show "The Partridge Family."
The Cowsills featured her five older brothers - John, Paul, Barry, Bob and Bill - and their mother, Barbara. Their father, William "Bud" Cowsill, was their manager until a year after Susan became a member. The group made six albums between 1966 and 1971. Their hit singles included "The Rain, The Park and Other Things," "Indian Lake" and the chart-topping "Hair," the title track from the musical of the same name.
"It obviously wasn't everyday life, but I didn't view being in the Cowsills as anything other than being in my family," Susan Cowsill recalled. "We made life on the road very entertaining for ourselves. One year we had an early concert on Halloween and my dad arranged for me to go trick-or-treating in whatever city we were in.
"We had a tutor on the road with us for really only one year. We went to 'professional schools' for a year in New York and in Los Angeles. They both had (options) where we could send in our work from the road, and that's what we did. Nobody learned anything! We were filling in each other's notebooks like crazy. It wasn't normal in any way shape or form."
With their wholesome image, rich vocal harmonies and well-crafted but unthreatening songs, the Cowsills were embraced as a clean-cut pop alternative to the increasingly more edgy rock music of the 1960s.
Were Susan and her brothers eager to rebel and create less commercial, more challenging music than their record company would allow?
"One hundred percent, but mostly my brothers," she said. "I was the youngest and was more tagging along but paying attention. My brothers were amazing musicians and songwriters. They started as an R&B band and were very serious about what they were doing. As often happens, the image of the band was taken over by the record company and they went with the 'wholesome family' thing. That's okay, but the music got hijacked."
'The band was done'
The Cowsills disbanded after the release of their arresting 1971 album, the Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young-inspired "On My Side." Susan was all of 12. At 14, she signed a record deal as a solo artist with Warner Bros. but released only two singles for the label. The first was "I Think of You," the first cover version by any artist of any song by Sixto "Sugarman" Rodriguez.
"When the band was done, the band was done," Cowsill said. "I didn't know what I was to do. I was left to my own devices. We weren't really prepared for life when we left the Cowsills. I was the youngest and trying to figure out what kind of music would I do, or if I would even make music. Or would I become a schoolteacher?"
The all-in-the-family band first reunited in 1978, then again in 1989, 1993 and 1998.
"The Cowsills never break up, we just take breaks. And then we all show up," Cowsill said.
Both parents have passed away; mom Barbara in 1985 and dad William in 1992. Susan's brothers, Barry and Bill, died in 2005 and 2006, respectively. The group was chronicled in the 2010 documentary "Family Band: The Cowsills Story," which premiered in the band's home state at the Rhode Island International Film Festival.
As has been the case for nearly all of the nearly one-dozen Happy Together tours the Cowsills have been featured on, Susan Cowsill is the only female musician.
"Susan is like so cool," said Turtles' singer Ron Dante.
"She makes everybody feel like they are in the family. She is a great singer and is a spark plug who keeps things running. She relay brings energy everywhere she goes. She is an amazing person,"
Fellow Happy Together tour artist Gary Puckett also happily sang her praises.
"Susan is absolutely wonderful," he said. "She's an earth mother who watches out for everybody on the tour. She fills the space with happiness."
The Cowsills have been inducted into the California Music Hall of Fame and New York's Long Island Hall of Fame. Susan Cowsill is delighted she and her brothers Bob and Paul get to tour together annually.
"What is surprising to me," she said, "is not that I'm playing with the guys - we'll do that until our last breath - but that we have a (regular) job. The Happy Together Tour is the first job security I've had in the music business.
"This is the 11th year for us with the tour. I like to say that we have jobs, but we have different time clocks and pay periods than most people."
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