The duo stuck with Williams and Nichols for 1971’s Rainy Days and Mondays, a song that showcases Karen’s gift for conveying pathos as the poster girl for suburban noir. Soon the Carpenters had their second million-seller and a pair of Grammys followed. The Carpenters’ next big hit – We’ve Only Just Begun –started life as a bank commercial, written by A&M in-house writing team Paul Williams and Roger Nichols. Incidentally, many assume the flugelhorn solo is by Alpert, but he was unavailable and Chuck Findley was drafted in to imitate the distinctive style of the Tijuana-brass legend. Bacharach conceded that the reimagining was exactly what his song needed. Richard decided to try it with a punchier, swinging groove and – voil à ! – the duo had their first US No 1. Listen to the Warwick version and you’ll notice the syncopation, featuring airy staccato plinks, rather elongates the phrasing. It had been recorded by the actor Richard Chamberlain and had also been a Dionne Warwick B-side from 1965. Richard’s genius as an arranger is evident on (They Long to Be) Close to You, a song offered to Alpert by Burt Bacharach, which he suggested his proteges cover because he didn’t want to sing the words “moondust in your hair” himself. Karen apparently always considered herself a drummer who sang, discovering she had a captivating voice only when a music teacher told her to try singing an octave lower. Although it would be unfair to say Karen struggles with the higher notes, she’s clearly more at ease in the lower register – what her voice lacks in range, it makes up for in raw, demonstrative soul. Richard’s chops as an arranger come to the fore in the second verse when his accompanying harpsichord takes the emotive ballad into the realms of baroque pop. The song starts with a plodding, plaintive piano and Karen’s rich alto, before she drum-rolls in and takes things up a notch. There are moments that hint at what was to come, though, namely Someday, Ticket to Ride (their Lennon and McCartney tribute, which charted modestly) and Eve, a standout power ballad by Carpenter and Bettis that wouldn’t have sounded out of place on any of the future albums. It was a commercial and critical flop on its initial release. A wayward collection of musically divergent numbers, with vocals shared equally by the siblings, it featured easy-listening kitsch, elevator jazz and numbers that wouldn’t have sounded out of place in the musical Hair. Copies of the original change hands for up to £2,000.įinally signed to A&M by Herb Alpert, the Carpenters released Offering, their first album as a duo, in 1969. The masters were destroyed in a fire at Osborn’s house in 1974, with the recording being reissued from a copy of the 45 owned by Richard. With its skittering rhythm section, part provided by Karen, and its proto- psychedelic flute, it’s very different from the Carpenters’ sound in the 70s, but the melody is strong, and so too is 16-year-old Karen’s old-before-its-time voice. The song wasn’t a hit, and Magic Lamp soon ceased trading, but the song – sung by Karen, written by Richard – was the pair’s first real foray into the recording business. One curio, Looking for Love, was recorded in a garage lockup owned by Wrecking Crew bassist Joe Osborn, who signed Karen to his Magic Lamp label. Then came Spectrum, the band in which Richard wrote many of the Carpenters’ future hits with John Bettis, often during downtime while they worked at Disneyland. The Richard Carpenter Trio won a battle of the bands at the Hollywood Bowl but little else. While the all-American siblings’ oeuvre was polished, they made a few false starts before they arrived at pop perfection. His sister Karen had little interest in music, but turned out to be an excellent drummer when she began playing the instrument in favour of the glockenspiel in the school band. The Carpenter family moved from New Haven, Connecticut, to Downey in Los Angeles in 1963, to pursue the starry ambitions of musical child prodigy Richard.
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