Monday April 4, 2022 “The Rain, the Park and Other Things” The Cowsills
In 1557 a gentleman by the name of Thomas Tusser compiled a collection of writings he called A Hundred Good Points of Husbandry. It had nothing to do with helpful hints for married men but in the April Husbandry section he wrote: “Sweet April showers, do spring May flowers”. Now that you own that trivial piece of history and potential cocktail conversation, let's spend this week musically celebrating the April rains that will bring us those flowers.
So today we will head into the park, with the rain, a mysterious ‘flower girl’ who may or may not be real and some other things. Today’s song”The Rain, the Park & Other Things” was the breakthrough hit for the family group, The Cowsills, who were the family band forerunners of The Osmonds and the inspiration for the TV sitcom The Partridge Family which was loosely based on the Cowsills.
“The Rain the Park and Other Things” was co-written by Artie Kornfeld who would be one of the primary promoters of the legendary/historic/original Woodstock Music and Arts Festival in 1969. Kornfeld, who also produced this Cowsill song, had planned to use the sound of a rainstorm in the song's intro, but recordings of real rain proved to be too faint to hear on record so instead he used a stock sound of sizzling bacon to simulate rain.
There’s so much that I love about music but one thing that always intrigues me is that when you hear a song it often will immediately take you to a place in time where you can see, feel and even smell everything from that moment and this song does that for me.
Stay safe and well…and although the Cowsills could play their own instruments their recordings were done with studio musicians.