Originally planned as a two-part television show titled The Family Band, the project was based on a book by Laura Bower Van Nuys. The memoir by Van Nuys, the youngest of the Bower children, described her family's brass band, their journey out of Missouri, and their frontier life in the Black Hills. The film reunited Lesley Ann Warren and John Davidson as the romantic leads in a Disney musical, having previously been paired in The Happiest Millionaire.