Carpenter, Karen (Singer/Drummer)

The Carpenters were a 1970s vocal and instrumental duo, consisting of siblings Karen and Richard Carpenter. With their brand of melodic pop, they charted a score of hit recordings on the American Top 40, becoming leading exponents of the soft rock or adult contemporary genre and ranking among the foremost recording artists of the decade.

Before Carpenters

Born in New Haven, Connecticut, USA, (Richard Lynn on October 15, 1946, and Karen Anne on March 2, 1950), the Carpenter siblings moved with their parents to California in 1963 and settled in the Los Angeles suburb of Downey. Richard had developed his interest in music at an early age, becoming a piano prodigy. The move to southern California was intended in part to foster his budding musical career. Karen, meanwhile, did not manifest her musical talents until high school, when she joined her high school band (Downey High School) and found an interest in the drums. She soon taught herself how to play the drums and mastered them. Around this time, she also realized she could sing.

1960s

During the mid to late 1960s, the two attempted to launch a musical career but failed to gain a successful recording deal until the decade’s end. In May 1966 Karen joined Richard in attending a late night session in the garage studio of L.A. bassist Joe Osborn, where Richard was to accompany an auditioning vocalist. Asked to sing, Karen performed and landed a short-lived recording contract as a solo artist with Osborn’s fledgling label Magic Lamp. The resulting single included two of Richard’s compositions, “Looking for Love” and “I’ll Be Yours,” but the label soon folded, bringing this promising start to a close.

During this period, the pair, joined by bassist friend Wes Jacobs, formed the Richard Carpenter Trio, a jazz instrumental group. Winning the Hollywood Bowl “Battle of the Bands” in 1966, the trio was picked up by the RCA label. The label chose not to release their songs, however, and doubting their commercial potential, RCA soon dropped the trio. Richard and Karen next teamed with four other student musicians from Long Beach State to form the sextet Spectrum. Although the new group landed club dates at such venues as the Whisky A Go-Go, no record deal was forthcoming. Nevertheless, the experience proved rewarding for the siblings, as Richard found a lyricist for his original compositions in fellow Spectrum member John Bettis.

After Spectrum folded, the Carpenters decided to continue as a duo, with Richard on keyboards, Karen on drums, and both contributing vocals. They sent out demo tapes and attracted the attention of A&M Records producer Jack Daugherty, who signed the duo in 1969. Their initial LP, titled Offering, featured numerous selections that Richard had written or co-written during their Spectrum period. The most significant track on the album, though, was a ballad rendition of The Beatles’ hit “Ticket To Ride”, which soon became a minor hit for the Carpenters, and the LP was subsequently repackaged and retitled Ticket to Ride with somewhat improved sales. Following the autumn release of “Ticket to Ride”, their label arranged for the duo to perform at the film premieres of Goodbye, Mr. Chips and Hello Dolly in December.

1970s

The Carpenters achieved their breakthrough in 1970 with the release of the Burt Bacharach-Hal David song, “(They Long to Be) Close to You”, which rose to #1 and stayed atop the charts for four weeks. Though Richard and Karen were not the first artists to cut the song – among the others were Dionne Warwick and Richard Chamberlain – the Carpenters’ version was by far the most popular, and the song has become synonymous with the duo. A follow-up recording, “We’ve Only Just Begun” (written by Paul Williams and Roger Nichols), reached #2 to become the duo’s second major hit in the fall of 1970. Both songs featured on the album “Close To You”, which became a bestseller. The duo rounded out the year with a holiday release, “Merry Christmas Darling”, which Richard co-wrote with Frank Pooler, who had been the duo’s choral director at Long Beach State. The single scored high on the holiday charts in 1970 and made repeat appearances on the charts in subsequent years.

A string of hit singles and albums kept the Carpenters on the charts through the early 1970s, including “For All We Know”, “Rainy Days and Mondays”, and “Superstar” (all from the LP, Carpenters) in 1971; “Hurting Each Other”, “It’s Going to Take Some Time”, and “Goodbye to Love” (from the LP, A Song for You) in 1972; “Sing” and “Yesterday Once More” (from the oldies-oriented LP, Now and Then) in 1973. “Top of the World”, an album selection on the Song for You LP, was covered by country artist Lynn Anderson (of “Rose Garden” fame), became a word-of-mouth hit and was re-recorded for single release in 1973, reaching number one on the Top 40 late that year. A greatest hits LP, titled The Singles: 1969-1973, topped the charts in the U.S. and the United Kingdom and became one of the bestselling albums of the decade, ultimately selling more than 7,000,000 copies in the U.S. alone.

During the first half of the 1970s, the Carpenters’ music was a staple of Top 40 playlists, and even more so Middle-of-the-Road, Easy Listening and Adult Contemporary radio. The duo produced a distinctive sound featuring Karen’s expressive contralto on lead vocals, with both siblings contributing background vocals that were overdubbed to create densely layered harmonies. To his role as vocalist, keyboardist, and arranger, Richard added that of composer on numerous tracks. Several of his compositions with lyricist John Bettis became hit records, including “Goodbye to Love”, “Yesterday Once More”, and “Top of the World”.

To promote their recordings, the Carpenters maintained a staggering schedule of concert tours and television appearances during this period. Among their numerous television credits were appearances on such popular series as American Bandstand, The Ed Sullivan Show, The Tonight Show starring Johnny Carson, and the Carol Burnett Show. In 1971 the duo appeared in a television special on the BBC in the United Kingdom and were the featured performers in a summer replacement series, Make Your Own Kind of Music, which aired on NBC-TV in the U.S. In May 1973 the Carpenters accepted an invitation to perform at the White House for President Richard Nixon and visiting West German chancellor Willy Brandt.

The Carpenters’ popularity often confounded critics. With their output focused on ballads and mid-tempo pop, the duo’s music was often dismissed by critics as bland and “saccharine”. The recording industry, however, bestowed awards on the duo, who won three Grammy Awards during their career (including Best New Artist, and Best Pop Performance by a Duo, Group, or Chorus, for “Close to You” in 1970; and Best Pop Performance by a Duo or Group for the LP Carpenters in 1971). In 1973, the Carpenters were voted Best Band, Duo, or Group (Pop/Rock) at the first annual American Music Awards.

Extensive touring in 1973-74 left the duo with little time for recording new material. As a result, the Carpenters did not issue a new album in 1974. Instead the pair chose for single release the Williams-Nichols composition, “I Won’t Last a Day Without You.” Originally recorded as an album track for 1972’s Song for You LP, the single version became the fifth and final selection from that album project to chart in the Top 20, reaching #11 on the U.S. charts. Also in 1974, the Carpenters achieved a massive international hit with an uptempo remake of Hank Williams’ “Jambalaya,” which, while not released as a single in the U.S., reached the top 30 in Japan and sold well in England, among other countries. In late 1974 a Christmas single followed, a jazz-influenced rendition of “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town”.

In early 1975 the Carpenters scaled the charts with a remake of the Marvelettes’ hit “Please Mr. Postman”. Released in late 1974, the single soared to #1 on the U.S. charts in January 1975, becoming the duo’s third and final number one single. Later that spring the pair scored a final top five hit with the Carpenter-Bettis song “Only Yesterday”. Both singles appeared on the LP Horizon, which also included covers of The Eagles’ “Desperado” and Neil Sedaka’s “Solitaire”, which became a moderate hit for the duo that year. The LPs Horizon and A Kind of Hush, released in 1975 and 1976 respectively, achieved “gold” status but failed to peak as high as previous efforts. Their singles releases in 1976 likewise followed a pattern of diminishing returns. The duo’s highest charting single that year was a cover of Herman’s Hermits’ “There’s a Kind of Hush”, which peaked at number 12. The follow-up single, the Carpenter-Bettis song “I Need to Be in Love” (said to be Karen’s favorite of all of the duo’s singles) charted no higher than 25, while the 1930s novelty song “Goofus” failed to reach the Top 40 entirely, and was also the first Carpenters single not to reach #1 or #2 on the Adult Contemporary chart since “Ticket To Ride.” The disco craze was in full swing by 1977, and adult-appeal “easy listening” artists like the Carpenters as well as John Denver, Helen Reddy, and Olivia Newton-John (before her starring role in the movie musical “Grease” brought her back to prominence) were getting lost in the shuffle.

Their more experimental album, Passage, released in 1977 (and no doubt partially inspired by the science-fiction craze of the late ’70s, due to Star Wars and Close Encounters of the Third Kind), marked an attempt to broaden their appeal by venturing into other musical genres. The LP featured an unlikely mix of Latin rock, calypso, and pop, and included the Top 40 hit “All You Get From Love is a Love Song”. The most notable tracks included cover versions of “Don’t Cry For Me, Argentina” (from the rock opera Evita), and Klaatu’s “Calling Occupants Of Interplanetary Craft”, both complete with choral and orchestral accompaniment. Although the single release of “Calling Occupants” became a top ten hit in the U.K., it stalled at number 32 on the U.S. charts, and the album failed to cross the gold threshold of 500,000 copies sold in the States. Richard has said that he felt another track from “Passage,” “I Just Fall In Love Again,” could have become a major success had A&M decided to release it as a single and might have gotten the duo back on track in terms of having hits. The song did in fact become a hit in 1979 for Anne Murray, proving Richard’s feelings about the song’s appeal.

Despite their disappointing performance on domestic charts, the Carpenters continued to enjoy enormous popularity. In 1978, they had a top 10 hit on the country chart with the uptempo, fiddle-sweetened “Sweet, Sweet Smile,” written by future country-pop star Juice Newton (on the pop chart, it came up a few notches short of the Top 40, stopping at #44). A second Singles album (covering the years 1974-1978) was released in the U.K., while in the States, their 1978 holiday album, A Christmas Portrait, proved an exception to their faltering career at home and became a seasonal favorite. Their television specials also garnered solid ratings and kept them before the public eye during the late 1970s. Karen dated such celebrities as Alan Osmond and Mike Curb.

1980s

On February 4, 1983, at the age of 32, Karen suffered cardiac arrest at her parents’ home in Downey and was taken to Downey Memorial Hospital where she was pronounced dead. Her funeral service took place on Tuesday 8th February, 1983 at the United Methodist Church in Downey. Karen Carpenter, dressed in pink, lay in an open white casket, and through an afternoon rain a thousand mourners passed through to say goodbye, among them her friends Dorothy Hamill, Olivia Newton John, Petula Clark, Cristina Ferrare and Dionne Warwick. “I saw her at the Grammys photo session and she was so proud of the way she looked”, Warwick said.

Voice Of The Heart was released in November 1983, an album that was in the works at the time of her death, also included some finished tracks left out of Made In America and a couple of earlier albums. Voice Of The Heart review The album peaked at #46, and two singles were released. “Make Believe It’s Your First Time”, a duo version of a song she had recorded for her solo album, only got up to #101, and “Your Baby Doesn’t Love You Anymore” didn’t chart in the U.S. A couple of the more depressing songs recorded for these sessions were held back for later compilations.

Source: Wikipedia contributors (2006). Carpenters. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 22:36, April 11, 2006.

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