Carpenters
The
Carpenters were an American vocal and instrumental duo consisting of siblings
Karen and Richard Carpenter. Producing a distinctively soft musical style, they
became one of the best-selling music artists of all time. During their 14-year
career, The Carpenters recorded 11 albums, 31 singles, five television
specials, and a short-lived television series. Their career ended in 1983 by
Karen's death from heart failure brought on by complications of anorexia.
Extensive news coverage surrounding the circumstances of her death increased
public awareness of eating disorders.
The duo's
brand of melodic pop produced a record-breaking run of hit recordings on the
American Top 40 and Adult Contemporary charts, and they became leading sellers
in the soft rock, easy listening and adult contemporary genres. The Carpenters
had three No. 1 singles and five No. 2 singles on the Billboard Hot 100 and
fifteen No. 1 hits on the Adult Contemporary chart. In addition, they had
twelve top 10 singles. To date, The Carpenters' album and single sales total
more than 100 million units.
Musical and lyrical style
Richard
Carpenter was the creative force behind the Carpenters sound. An
accomplished keyboard player, composer and arranger, Richard Carpenter was
called by music critic Daniel Levitin "one of the most gifted arrangers to
emerge in popular music." In a period when contemporary music was
dominated by heavy rock, their smooth harmonies were not in step with the
trends of the day.
The sound the
Carpenters were going for was rich and melodic, along the same vein as the
harmonies found in their contemporaries The Beach Boys and the The Mamas &
the Papas, but with greater fullness and orchestration. Most of Richard's
arrangements were classical in style, with frequent use of strings and
occasional brass and woodwind instruments as well. Richard's work with Karen
was heavily influenced by the music of Les Paul, whose overdubbing of the voice
of partner Mary Ford allowed her to be used as both the lead and harmonizing
vocals. By use of multi-tracked recordings, Richard was able to use Karen and
himself for the harmonies to back Karen's lead. The overdubbed background
harmonies were distinctive to the Carpenters, but it was the soulful, engaging
sound of Karen's lead voice that made them so recognizable.
Karen did not
possess a powerful singing voice, but close miking brought out many nuances in
her performances. Richard Coles, a musician and broadcaster, commented: «No
singer is so closely miked up so unforgivingly as Karen Carpenter. That is
frightening for singers because the closer the microphone the more unforgiving
it is in exposing the weaknesses in a singer's voice».
Karen's lower
register was warm and distinctive.[peacock term] Richard arranged their music
to take advantage of the qualities of said lower register, even if Karen's full
vocal range spanned over three octaves. Many of the Carpenters' songs are in
the keys of D («You», «There's a Kind of Hush (All Over the World)»), E flat («Only
Yesterday»), E («Hurting Each Other», «Yesterday Once More»), F («I'll Never
Fall in Love Again»), and G («And When He Smiles», «Reason to Believe», «For
All We Know», «You'll Love Me»).
Richard is
best known for his use of the Wurlitzer electric piano, whose sound he described
as «warm» and «beautiful». He also played the grand piano, Hammond organ,
synthesizer and even the harpsichord with the band. In the recording studio, he
often would overdub his acoustic piano parts with a Wurlitzer electric piano to
thicken the sound. From the mid-1970s, Richard also used Fender Rhodes pianos.
While touring, he often would have a grand piano as well as both a Rhodes and a Wurlitzer electric piano on stage for
different songs.
Karen was an
accomplished drummer and initially only played drums, but soon began to sing
for the group in addition to playing the drums. Before 1974, Karen played the
drums for all their songs. According to Richard, she considered herself a «drummer
who sang». However, while Karen's vocals soon became the centerpiece of the
group's performances, at 5'4" tall, performing behind her drum kit made it
difficult for audiences to see her. It was soon apparent to Richard and their
manager that the audience wanted to see more of Karen.
Although unwilling, she
eventually agreed to sing the ballads standing up front, returning to her drums
for the lesser known songs. As the group's popularity increased, demand for
Karen's vocals overshadowed her drumming. Gradually, she played the drums less.
By the time their album A Kind of Hush was released in 1976, she had not played
the drums for the studio sessions at all, though she continued to play some
during concerts. From spring 1976 onward, the tours would include a drum medley
for Karen to play, and a piano solo number was included for Richard. Karen made
a final return to studio drumming for the track «When It's Gone (It's Just
Gone)» on the album Made in America,
albeit in tandem with Nashville
session drummer Larrie Londin. She also provided percussion in tandem with
Paulinho da Costa on the song «Those Good Old Dreams».
Close to You
Despite the
poor showing of the Carpenters' initial album, A&M stayed with them and had
them develop songs for a second album. Herb Alpert asked Richard to re-work a
Burt Bacharach/Hal David song titled «(They Long to Be) Close to You». The
Carpenters' version was released as a 45 RPM record single. It debuted at No.
56, the highest debut of the week ending June 20, 1970.[35] Over the next five
weeks, it vaulted to No. 1, reaching that perch on July 25 and staying there
for the next four weeks. Burt Bacharach said:
The arrangement of 'Close to You' that Richard did
compared to the arrangement that I did for myself and for Dionne (Warwick) and
the original record with Richard Chamberlain I'd say is twenty times better,
Richard's arrangement than my arrangement. I really missed and he really nailed
it. He just got a great feel, a great loop, the dotted eighth and sixteenth
feel. It's great.
Their next
hit was with a song Richard had seen in a television commercial for Crocker
National Bank, «We've Only Just Begun», written by Paul Williams and Roger
Nichols. Three months after «(They Long to Be) Close to You» reached No. 1, the
Carpenters' version of «We've Only Just Begun» reached No. 2 on the Billboard
Hot 100, becoming the first of their eventual five No. 2 hits (it was unable to
get past «I'll Be There» by The Jackson 5 and «I Think I Love You» by The
Partridge Family during its four-week stay). The song became the first hit
single for Williams and Nichols and is considered by Richard Carpenter to be
the group's signature tune.
«Close to You»
and «We've Only Just Begun» became RIAA certified Gold singles and were
featured on the best-selling album Close to You, which placed No. 175 on Rolling
Stone's 500 Greatest Albums of All Time list in 2003.
The duo rounded out the
year with the holiday release of «Merry Christmas, Darling». The single scored
high on the holiday charts and would repeatedly return to the holiday charts in
subsequent years. In 1978, feeling she could give a more mature treatment to
the tune, Karen re-cut the vocal for their Christmas TV special; this remake
also became a hit.
Public image
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
being bland and saccharine. The recording industry, however, bestowed awards on
the duo, who won three Grammy Awards during their career (Best New Artist, and
Best Pop Performance by a Duo, Group, or Chorus, for "(They Long to Be)
Close to You" in 1970; and Best Pop Performance by a Duo or Group for
their eponymous LP Carpenters in 1971). In 1974, the Carpenters were voted
Favorite Pop/Rock Band, Duo, or Group at the first annual American Music
Awards.
Richard would
often state in interviews that many critics usually judged them to "drink
milk, eat apple pie and take showers."
I don't even
like milk. Not that we're totally opposite from that, we're not. But there is
an in-between – I don't drink… a lot. I do have wine with dinner. I voted to
make marijuana legal...
In Coleman's
The Carpenters: The Untold Story, Richard stressed repeatedly how much he
disliked the A&M executives for making their image "squeaky-clean",
and the critics for criticizing them for their image rather than their music.
I got upset
when this whole "squeaky clean" thing was tagged on to us. I never
thought about standing for anything! They [the critics] took "Close to
You" and said: "Aha, you see that number one? THAT's for the people
who believe in apple pie! THAT's for people who believe in the American flag!
THAT's for the average middle-American person and his station wagon! The
Carpenters stand for that, and I'm taking them to my bosom!" And boom, we
got tagged with that label.
In a
documentary about the Carpenters, musician and songwriter Paul Williams stated
the duo was often labeled as being "too vanilla". Williams supported
them by saying, "Yes, but what an exquisite flavor vanilla is."
Legacy
Karen
Carpenter has been called one of the best female vocalists of all time by
influential media as diverse as Rolling Stone Magazine and National Public
Radio, and Paul McCartney called her the best female vocalist ever, saying that
she was "the best female voice in the world: melodic, tuneful and
distinctive." A critical re-evaluation of Carpenters occurred during the
1990s and 2000s with the making of several documentaries produced in the United
States, Japan, and Great Britain, like Close to You: Remembering the Carpenters
(United States), The Sayonara (Japan), and Only Yesterday: The Carpenters Story
(Great Britain). It has been said that Karen's signature vocals helped spur
more contralto singers into pop music such as Anne Murray, Rita Coolidge, and
Melissa Manchester. Despite contentions that their sound was "too
soft" to fall under the definition of rock and roll, major campaigns and
petitions exist toward inducting Carpenters in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
In 1990, the
alternative rock band Sonic Youth recorded «Tunic (Song for Karen)», which
depicted Karen saying goodbye to relatives as she got to play the drums again
and meet her new "friends", Dennis Wilson, Elvis Presley and Janis
Joplin. A tribute album, If I Were a Carpenter, by contemporary artists such as
Sonic Youth, Bettie Serveert, Shonen Knife, Grant Lee Buffalo, Matthew Sweet,
and The Cranberries, appeared in 1994 and provided an alternative rock interpretation
of Carpenters hits.
Several of
their songs have achieved the status of popular standards. «Superstar» has been
covered by numerous artists, with popular recordings from Luther Vandross and
Ruben Studdard to Bette Midler, Shonen Knife, Sonic Youth and Colleen Hewett.
Both «We've
Only Just Begun» and «(They Long to Be) Close to You» have been honored with
Grammy Hall of Fame awards for recordings of lasting quality or historical
significance.
Modern
entertainers such as Christina Aguilera, Gwen Stefani, Shania Twain, Jann
Arden, Anastacia, The Corrs, Mary J. Blige, Alicia Keys, Chrissie Hynde, Gloria
Estefan, Lorrie Morgan, LeAnn Rimes, Michelle Wright, k.d. lang, Kelly Jones of
Stereophonics, Christina Perri, Beyoncé, Johnny Borrell of Razorlight, Jo
O'Meara from S Club, Carnie Wilson from Wilson Phillips, Mandy Moore, Michael
Jackson, and Madonna have listed Karen Carpenter as a huge influence on their
careers.
Discography
Main article:
The Carpenters discography
See also:
List of songs recorded by The Carpenters
The
Carpenters released 30 singles during their career. Of the thirty, ten were
certified Gold by the RIAA, and twenty-two peaked in the top 10 on the Adult
Contemporary chart. In addition, The Carpenters also had ten albums from
1969–1983. Five of the albums contained two or more top 20 hits on the Billboard
Hot 100 (Close to You, Carpenters, A Song for You, Now & Then, and
Horizon).
Ticket to Ride (1969)
Close to You (1970)
Carpenters (1971)
A Song for You (1972)
Now & Then (1973)
Horizon (1975)
A Kind of Hush (1976)
Passage (1977)
Christmas Portrait
(1978)
Made in America (1981)
Posthumous releases
Voice of the Heart
(1983)
An Old-Fashioned
Christmas (1984)
Lovelines (1989)
As Time Goes By (2001)
Carpenters - Close To You [1970]
Close to You
is the second studio album by American duo The Carpenters, released on August
19, 1970. In 2003, the album was ranked number 175 on Rolling Stone Magazine's
list of the 500 greatest albums of all time. The album contains the hit singles
«(They Long to Be) Close to You» and «We've Only Just Begun». «(They Long to
Be) Close to You» was the duo's song that gained the Carpenters an
international reputation for a decade. The album topped the Canadian Albums
Chart and peaked at No 2 on the US Billboard albums chart. It was also
successful in the United
Kingdom, entering the top 50 of the official
chart for 76 weeks during the first half of the 1970s.
Song information
«(They Long
to Be) Close to You» was the first Burt Bacharach/Hal David composition
Carpenters covered. The song was recorded time and time again during the
sixties, but didn't do well at all until the Carpenters version. It became
Richard and Karen Carpenter's first RIAA-certified Gold single, as well as
their first Billboard Hot 100 single that reached the Top 10. It stayed at
number 1 for 4 weeks, and became Carpenters' iconic song.
«We've Only
Just Begun» started out as a commercial for Crocker Citizen's Bank in 1970,
composed by Paul Williams and Roger Nichols. The commercial showed a couple getting
married and starting their life together. In August 1970, it became the
Carpenters' second RIAA-certified Gold single. Richard regards this as the
duo's signature song.
Originally
written by Ralph Carmichael for the early contemporary Christian musical Tell
It Like It Is, «Love Is Surrender» was a song Richard and Karen heard during
their teen years. Several of the overtly Christian lyrics were changed for this
version, notably from «Without Him, love is not to be found» to «Without love
you are not to be found» and «You must surrender to His will» to «You must
surrender if you care». The arrangement is based on one recorded by Carmichael on his album, I Looked for Love. The original Carmichael recording was mid-tempo, but Richard recorded
it up-tempo with extra percussion. The Carpenters' recording is one of only two
tracks on the album on which Richard Carpenter performs lead vocals.
«Maybe It's
You» is a song written by Richard Carpenter and John Bettis for their previous
band, Spectrum. It's a very low-key song, with an oboe solo by Doug Strawn.
«Reason to
Believe» is a song composed by Tim Hardin in the 1960s. Rod Stewart made a hit
with it in 1971. Karen claimed in a live concert that the reason why they love
the song is because it was one of the first songs they performed together as a
group.
«Help!» is a
song written by John Lennon and Paul McCartney in early 1965. Carpenters
produced three Beatles covers («Ticket to Ride», «Help», and «Can't Buy Me Love»,
the last from Your Navy Presents).
«Baby It's
You» is a song composed by Burt Bacharach, Barney Williams, and Mack David. It
was sung by Richard and Karen in 1970, and performed on their TV show, Make
Your Own Kind of Music.
«I'll Never
Fall in Love Again» is the third consecutive Burt Bacharach composition on the
album. It was included on their medley the following year, on the album
Carpenters. According to Tom Riddle of Your Navy Presents, there was a 29 vocal
harmony on the song. Originally part of the score for Bacharach and David's
1968 musical Promises, Promises, the song had provided a top-ten hit for Dionne
Warwick in January 1970.
Originally
performed by Karen and Richard in the California
State University,
Long Beach
choir in 1969, "Crescent Noon" is a song composed by Richard
Carpenter and John Bettis.
«Mr. Guder»
was dedicated to Richard Carpenter and John Bettis's boss at Disneyland,
Vic Guder. It was a bit of a last tease to the man who fired the duo. They were
hired to play old-time music on piano and banjo at the park's «Coke Corner» on Main Street, U.S.A., but they persisted in
playing contemporary tunes that the patrons requested. The lyrics say:
You're everything a
robot lives for:
Walk in at nine, and
roll out the door at five.
You reflect the company
image;
You maintain their rules
to live by.
Shine your shoes, let's
keep a neat haircut,
Now that
you're wearing a coat and tie.
Many of their
later recordings that were composed in the late 1960s were written during their
Disneyland career.
«I Kept on
Loving You», a song written by Paul Williams and Roger Nichols, features
Richard on lead vocal and despite being uncredited in the album's liner notes,
a guitarist is playing on the song, possibly either Gary Sims or a Los
Angeles-based session guitarist.
«Another Song»
was another Carpenter/Bettis creation that was very different from the typical
Carpenters song and is essentially a suite in three movements: a pop section
(0:00–1:45), a medieval-influenced section (1:45–2:28), and a jazz section
(2:28–4:22). The song opens with a short prelude based on the harmony and
melodic contour of the accompanied recitative "And, lo! the angel of the
Lord came upon them" from Part I of George Frideric Handel's oratorio
Messiah (1742).
Track listing
Side one
No. Title Writer(s) Length
1. We've Only Just Begun
Roger Nichols, Paul Williams 3:04
2. Love Is Surrender Ralph
Carmichael 1:59
3. Maybe It's You John
Bettis, Richard Carpenter 3:09
4. Reason to Believe Tim
Hardin 3:02
5. Help John Lennon,
Paul McCartney 3:02
6. (They Long
to Be) Close to You Burt Bacharach, Hal David 4:34
Side two
No. Title Writer(s) Length
7. Baby It's You Bacharach,
Mack David, Barney Williams 2:50
8. I'll Never Fall in
Love Again Bacharach, H. David 2:56
9. Crescent Noon Bettis,
Carpenter 4:09
10. Mr. Guder Bettis, Carpenter 3:17
11. I Kept On Loving You
Nichols, P. Williams 2:13
12. Another
Song Bettis, Carpenter 4:22
Personnel:
Karen Carpenter –
vocals, drums
Hal Blaine – drums
Richard Carpenter –
vocals, keyboards, arrangements and orchestration
Joe Osborn – bass
Danny Woodhams – bass
Jim Horn – woodwinds
Bob Messenger –
woodwinds
Doug Strawn – woodwinds
Jack Daugherty –
producer
Ray Gerhardt – engineer
Dick Bogert – engineer
Tom Wilkes – art
direction
Kessel/Brehm
Photography – photography
Released: August 19,
1970
Recorded: 1969 – May 15,
1970
Genre: Pop, easy
listening
Length: 38:37
Label: A&M
Producer: Jack
Daugherty
Carpenters - Close To You [1970] (Full Album)
Side one
1. We've Only Just Begun
[Roger Nichols, Paul Williams] (3:04) 00:00
2. Love Is Surrender [Ralph
Carmichael] (1:59) 03:05
3. Maybe It's You [John
Bettis, Richard Carpenter] (3:09) 05:04
4. Reason to Believe [Tim
Hardin] (3:02) 08:11
5. Help John Lennon, [Paul
McCartney] (3:02) 11:17
6. (They Long
to Be) Close to You [Burt Bacharach, Hal David] (4:34) 14:22
Side two
7. Baby It's You [Bacharach,
Mack David, Barney Williams] (2:50) 18:58
8. I'll Never Fall in
Love Again [Bacharach, H. David] (2:56) 21:52
9. Crescent Noon [Bettis,
Carpenter] (4:09) 24:53
10. Mr. Guder [Bettis, Carpenter] (3:17) 29:06
11. I Kept On Loving You
[Nichols, P. Williams] (2:13) 32:21
12. Another
Song [Bettis, Carpenter] (4:22) 34:39
