From 1970 to 1974, a time when most kids swore by the adage "Don't trust anyone over thirty," ABC aired The Partridge Family, an extremely popular sitcom featuring a mom who went on tour with her kids in a band. The hit show was loosely based on the late 1960s folk-music family, the Cowsills.

The Partridge Family (one of two 1970s sitcoms about a big family and a perky blond mom; The Brady Bunch was the other) starred Oscar winner and musical theater staple Shirley Jones as Shirley Partridge, the widowed matriarch whose kids started jamming in an impromptu session in the garage of their suburban California home. They asked her to join them, and it sounded groovy. They recorded the song "I Think I Love You," and to everyone's surprise, a record company bought it, it became a smash hit, and a band was born...