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1. Move to Downey and The Start of a Music Career

Would any writers out there like to contribute to the site and offer a write up about the Carpenters move to Downey and the start of their music career?

If so, submit your idea's or contributions here or email them to me. I will also offer credit to the contributors on the site. It will be launched with the new site in the coming weeks.

I may add to this list a few other pages at most. But that is the start of what would be helpful.

Thanks!
Pamela

Looks and sounds like a real nice idea Pamela.

I would if I had the information and knew what I was talking about.
Edited by pushfrog, 15 January 2006 - 09:58 PM.

I'll do it!

Well, I'll have a go anyways
Edited by newvillefan, 16 January 2006 - 01:36 AM.

Goodness you were up early!!!

Yay to you for offering to write about the 1965-1968 Carpenter years

That's cos I was away to bed early last night. I couldn't really burn the candle at both ends that much Rach!

I like doing stuff like this, gonna give it a try tonight. On that note, Pamela how long do you want it to be?

I only went to bed at 2:00am...which is why I only got up at 8:30!

I wrote the following after I read Pamela's message yesterday. If there are some info that Stephen #1 has not known and he is including some of these, I'm happy.


I cannot write, but here are some info from Ms. Reiko Yukawa's interview
with Richard. (1996 March 1st)

The Carpenter family lived in New Haven, Connecticut. I don't know until
when Joan lived with them.

According to the interview, 'the Carpenter family planned to move to
California in 1955. But Harold suffered from ear(s?) disease. The operation
charge didn't let them move to California.
Because Harold didn't like the weather,. he would like to move to
California.
Finally they could move in June 1963.

Around 1963 Richard attended first recording session in New York.'
Richard talked about this recording on BBC Radio2 documentary in
Septmeber 2001(?). I think this broadcast was mentioned on this site.
'"Karen didn't play drums. No one thought she would be a great singer. Our
parents might think it was not bad to be near to Hollywood, because I might
become a popular pianist or a songwriter. But New York is also center of
music. Therefore we moved because of weather.'

"In 1963 I told Karen to sing "The End Of The World" on a talent contest at
a park .Her key was high.
1 or 2 years later she became to be able to sing in lower register. In 1965
I wrote "You'll Love Me" in G and she sang this song. She sang this in
lower than usual. This tune was included on box set. Her voice didn't have
vibrate yet."

"Karen and I used to play together when we were children. She and I had the
same taste for music. She almost always came to places where I performed.
In summer of 1965 we started as a trio. Wes Jacobs on the bass, Karen on the
drums and me on the piano. She was 15."'


From the radio, TV, newsletter, books or linernotes,
In 1965 The Richard Carpenter Trio recorded Duke Elllington's "Caravan".

Wes also played the Tuba.

Karen and Richard recorded at Joe Osborn's garage studio. They and Joe
tested how many tracks they could overdub.

On May 13th of 1966 Karen was signed to Magic Lamp. Recorded "The Parting Of
Our Ways", "Looking For Love" and "I'll Be Yours" which were written by
Richard.
In the same year The Richard Carpenter Trio won Battle of the Bands held at
the Hollywood Bowl. They performed "The Girl From Impanema" and"Iced Tea".
In September of 1966 they were signed to RCA. Eleven sides were cut.
They recorded two songs of Battle of the Bands, "Caravan" and "The Parting Of Our Ways".
"You'll Love Me", "Invocation", "Your Wonderful Parade", "All I Can Do" and "Flat Baroque"
were recorded. (I'm not sure if they were recorded for RCA.)

In 1966 Karen and Richard performed "Nowhere Man" and ballad "I Wanna Hold
Your Hand", "Never Been In Love" and "Every Little Thing".

By 1967 Wes left Los Angels to study at Julliard.
Richard, his friends and Karen formed a group called Summerchimes.(5
members) Nine songs were recorded at a new studio called United Audio in
Orange County. In May of 1967 "You'll Love Me" was recorded.

Summerchimes became Spectrum.(6 members)
Richard and Karen got SONY 200 and recorded in the living room and bathroom.
"All I Can Do" on "from the top" was one of the songs.

By mid 1968 Spectrum had disbanded.

On June the 22nd and 28th of 1968 Karen, Richard and ? ( I cannot spell the name
of bass guitar player.) -appeared as Dick Carpenter Trio on Your All American College
Show. (According to the winner announcement, The Carpenter Trio., though.) Karen
sang "Dancing In The Street".

Karen and Richard called themselves Carpenters. They recorded demo tapes at
Joe Osborn's garage studio and sent tapes to all the record companies. A
friend of a friend of a friend of them heard the demo tape and the tape was
brought to Herb Alpert. (At 11:32am on April the 22nd of 1969 they signed
with A&M Records. So probably Herb Alpert heard Karen's voice in 1969.)
"Invocation" and "Your Wonderful Parade" were recorded in 1968.

Demo tape in 1969 had "Turn Away", "All Of My Life", "All I Can Do" and other
3 songs. In 1969 Richard was watching the TV. "Eve" inspired Richard to wrote "Eve".

I reached 1969.

Sakura

Oh how cool, Sakura already did the job for us without us realising

Sakura is the best & can always be relied on when one is having a Carpenters information crisis!

Thanks so much Sakura. It would have to be rewritten because obviously I cant put word for word, but that is certainly a terrific start!

Pamela

I skipped a date or something that I couldn't spell.

�eThe Battle of the Bands�f wa held at the Hollywood Bowl on June 24, 1966.

One more RCA tune, Strangers in the Night.

In 1967 Richard and John Bettis performed at Coke Corner of disneyland. They wrote song such as "Candy" aka "One Love".

Spectrum performed at The Blue Law and, The Whisky A-Go-Go- and The Troubadour.
From Carpenters Special Souvenir written by Dick Tatham
Karen recalls, "At the Whisky, the customers sat and listened to us. That's wasn't what the club wanted. If you sit, you don't dance. If you don't dance, you don't get thirsty. In that case, you don't spend. So we were kicked out. Once we opened a Steppenwolf show at the Blue Law, which was a big warehouse. At first, the audience was so restive, we thought we were going to get killed. But we kept going and they shut up and listened.


In 1968 Richard and Karen recorded "Don't Be Afraid", "Your Wonderful Parade"and "Invocation" at Jo Osborn's garage stutios in San fernando Valley.

Bass player for Your All American College Show was Bill Sissyoev.. The songs were a short medley of Dancing in the Street and The Shadow of Your Smile.

Ford asked Richard and Karen to promote an upcoming new car, the Maverick..
But they didn't.


I thought Stephen #1 would write and deleted the part about starting playing drums. I don't want write it again, so here is some from Stephen's transcript of 1993 BBC Special.

When Karen entered her teens, the family moved to Downey, California, a few miles from Los Angeles. Karen joined a new school and quickly made new friends. Up until then Karen had given no thought as to what she might do when she grew up. But as Richard recalls:
RC: Of course when people asked her, the two answers she would give were a 'nurse' or a 'stewardess', which I think is what all little girls answer!
If Karen had given this no thought, society virtually dictated what she would do next.

RC: Growing up in the fifties, Karen went through the obligatory accordion lessons. I mean, I had accordion lessons, everybody did! So she had a few lessons, but she didn't like it... Then the band director at our elementary school decided that he needed flutists and Karen was rendered a flute. And that didn't go either! And that was pretty much it, as far as Karen was concerned, for many a year.
It's Going To Take Some Time

CHAPTER 2
The seeds for our future are sown in formative years, and there's a strong possibility that what happened to Karen at this stage would affect everything about her later life: she was beginning to have a weight problem.

RC: Karen was a chubby teenager - definitely.
Karen was growing up at a time when thin was 'in'. Magazine covers constantly sported pictures of Twiggy, the Shrimp and other models. Southern California is renowned for its active outdoor lifestyle and a chubby teenage girl may have been the subject of ridicule. And although Karen liked certain sports and games, at age 13 she finally got into music as a way of getting out of a sporting activity.

KC: Oh that's absolutely true! Rich went to Downey high for his senior year and when I joined him the following year, I didn't like gym. I liked softball and basketball and all that type of stuff, but I DIDN'T like running around a track at 8 o'clock in the morning. 'Cos running ISN'T one of my gifts, believe me!
RC: And I found out that if a person were in marching band, they could be excluded from physical education.
KC: So Rich said "We'll get into the marching band!", and I said "But I don't play anything". And he said "That's no problem - Gifford [the musical director] will let you play the glockenspiel". So I did, but I didn't really like it because it's not a very convenient instrument to play and it's hard to carry... and it's always a quarter-step sharp to the band, which used to drive me crazy! But the good thing about it is, the glockenspiel is a percussion instrument, it marches in the percussion line. And I was automatically TAKEN OVER by a love for the drums! I had no idea whether I could play 'em or not, but I wanted to and I was very determined... but the band director said "That's not really normal". Of course, all you have to tell me is that something's not normal and I'll go for it!! And luckily I had a gift for it, and within a couple of weeks we went out and bought a drum set...
Now a teenager with a drum-set in the house might spell trouble. It was also highly unusual for that teen to be a girl. But as brother Richard explains, they were blessed with exceptional parents:

RC: They were very good, my folks, in every way, and one was encouraging anything like this. Now you have to understand, they were a bit sceptical at first: here comes this 13 year-old girl... oh, you know how it goes with kids! She'd wanted a dog, she SAID she'd take care of him, so they got her the dog and the FOLKS took care of him! And now the latest thing is "I want a set of drums". Well, drums are noisy, they take up room and they cost money... and we all figured this was going to pass within about a month. But we had these stools that went up to the breakfast bar in the kitchen and she'd play on these stools! (It started with dad's chopsticks and then some drumsticks!) And you could tell that she... she knew it! All these cadences and stuff... So they broke down and bought her a little set of Ludwigs brand new and obviously - THE REST IS HISTORY! She took to them, she could play in all time signatures and she possessed the most important thing a good drummer needs to possess, which is time. Rock-solid, like a metronome, her time! And as her teacher Bill Douglas said, she had "good wrists". Obviously she didn't have the strength of a lot of drummers, but she had good time, a good sense of fill and...she was a very good drummer!
And Karen was happy to demonstrate her technique on a recording made in the Carpenters living room in the summer of 1965.

Caravan

KC: Also that year was a horror, what with geometry. I lasted three days and I was totally lost, so I joined the choir, 'cos I didn't sing.
RC: Karen really exhibited... no talent! The little bit I asked her to sing would be for the really high parts that we would use every third blue moon in our recordings. But the lower voice hadn't shown itself yet.
As the playing improved, so too did Karen's singing. Through a friend Joe Osborn who had a garage studio and a record label 'Magic Lamp', Karen signed a solo record deal!

RC: By 1965, the lower voice started to show itself. I have recordings which I won't let anyone hear because... oh boy, she would not be happy! If you heard it, you'd barely know that it's Karen: it's in tune and there is somewhat of the sound, but there is no vibrato, it's kinda 'nasal' and it's just in its embryonic stages. If anything it kinda sounds a little 'country'. But by the time we went into Joe Osborn's garage studio, it was definitely THE VOICE. I mean, she matured somewhat over the years, but the sound was there. She had a hit voice in 1966 by the time she was 16.
I'll Be Yours

CHAPTER 3
Karen's influences up till now had been taken form her father's eclectic record collection and like Richard she too listened to Spike Jones, big bands, Liberace, even Les Paul and Mary Ford. It had been the duo of Les Paul and Mary Ford that had intrigued Richard since childhood, and with Karen's voice now developing into something distinctive and unique, he formulated a sound for the Carpenters.

RC: I was hooked on the overdub sound of Les Paul and Mary Ford back in 1951. I had no idea how they did it, I just knew that was a whole bunch of Mary Fords, I knew it! You could tell! And I remember asking my mother, "How does she do it?" I mean, I was six years old, I didn't know about overdubbing! [Laughs] And of course my mother didn't know! So she said, "She just works at it. You have to work at it!"
Top Of The World

In 1966 Karen and Richard decided to pool their musical resources and along with a friend, Wes Jacobs, they entered the 'Battle of the Bands' at the famed Hollywood Bowl.

RC: I was highly competitive and so was Karen... and Wes in his way, but maybe not to the degree then that Karen and I were. But WE knew it was a competition! Oh sure! But it wasn't the type of thing, as people tend to believe, where you get a recording contract if you win. It's just to go through the competition, to see what you can do... of course you get a beautiful trophy, but that's pretty much it! We did two tunes in the competition: one was a multi-time signature of The Girl From Ipanema, the other an original of mine called Iced Tea.
Iced Tea

They won the competition and were feeling pretty pleased with themselves.

RC: I guess I'm heading towards the car and this fellow approaches me. He says he liked it and all of that and would we be interested in... [pauses] I don't know, it had something to do with a contract and a recording studio, and he thinks there may be some potential in our sound... something like this. And I said [chuckles] "Oh, we're already with a record label!" And he replied, "Well, if the situation should happen to change, here's my card" - I still have that card - and it reads: Neely Plumb, West Coast Representative RCA Victor Records. At this point I'm thinking "Oh my God! What a jerk you are Rich! Pull your foot out of your mouth and see if you can dance your way out if this!" So I replied, "Well, my SISTER is signed with the label, and as a vocalist", because he didn't know she sang. He had just heard the trio! Well, this went on for months, we cut some sides up at RCA in Sunset Boulevard and of course - the thumbs down!
But Richard and Karen were undaunted, gathering together more musicians to form another group - Summerchimes.

You'll Love Me

RC: We never thought about giving up, but it was hard. Just in Karen's talent alone, I could not figure someone not picking her up. But I believed in Carpenters sound too, you know; with Karen's lead and then all those overdubs... I just thought it made for a very commercial sound. Anyway, around this time Joe Osborn, who believed in us and especially in Karen, said that we could use his studio, gratis, just to try out things. And when we heard all those overdubs from the group done by just Karen and me... well, Spectrum was good - this was better. You can't beat a blend with yourself!
Don't Be Afraid

Don't Be Afraid, from the Magic Lamp sessions, and part of the demo tape sent to Herb Alpert by Richard and Karen, who by now were calling themselves, plain and simply Carpenters.

RC: Around this time there was a group called The First Edition (before it became Kenny Rogers and The First Edition). And they were auditioning for girl singers and Karen decided to have a crack at it. And I figured, once they hear Karen... Karen's voice REALLY became magical when it was amplified. I mean, if she stood in this room and sang she was great, but it was very soft. So once it became amplified, it brought out just how terrific it really was... And I figured, here goes everything I've been working towards because they're gonna sign her and that's that! Come on, this was 1968, Karen sounded like KAREN! And they turned her down! I couldn't believe it! I mean, you are talking about a BIG mistake!!!
But as one door closes, another one opens: through a friend Karen and Richard made it onto a locally shown TV talent contest.

RC: And as a result of this we got a call, some time in '68, from a chap named John Bahler. He and his brother Tom were big jingle singers. And we were invited to join their group, The Going Thing which promoted the Ford campaign on TV. But in addition to doing the campaign, they were going to augment the group and send it on the road... So we went up to the offices at J. Walter Thompson and talked to the ad executives, and it turned out we would be promoting the new Ford Mustang. Well, lo-and-behold - within DAYS of signing this contract, the A&M deal comes through! [Laughs] It's like, either all or nothing at all, you know? Of course it was a big deal giving up $50,000 a year PLUS a car each... but that was to be in another group! Obviously what we were working towards was the two of us. And here was Herb Alpert... Well, the people at J. Walter Thompson were all very nice about it, they let us out of the contract instead of being hard-nosed about it - and on we went to A&M.
Ticket To Ride

Richard talked about "Mr. Guder" 1967 on the Tonight Show. We can watch it on Ran's site.

Sakura

I remember typing all that stuff up at uni, it took me ages and I really should have been studying

Ah, so you've had no life for that long?


Great job though