Little Girl Blue

by Randy L. Schmidt

  Herb Alpert and Jerry Moss took great pride in their artists, “encouraging them to reach their creative potential,” as they wrote years later in From Brass to Gold, an exhaustive A&M Records discography. “We looked for artists who had a strong sense of themselves musically and surrounded them with an environment and people who could help them express their unique talents.” For Alpert, musical honesty and sincerity took priority over potential sales when considering a new artist. “It doesn’t matter if they’re a jazz musician, a classical musician, or rap or pop,” he explained. “I think the real measure is if you are really doing it from your heart. The music that the Carpenters made was straight from their hearts. Richard was and is a real student of the record business. He knows a good song, he knows where to record it, he knows the musicians. Karen had this extraordinary voice, and they put the right combination together, and it was touching.”

  It was Jerry Moss who officially signed the Carpenters to A&M, just before noon on Tuesday, April 22, 1969. “You think we could meet Herb?” Ed Sulzer asked. Alpert entered, greeted his new acquisitions, and said, “Let’s hope we have some hits!”

  A&M DID not micromanage their artists, even the newest and youngest on the roster. They held their artists in such high regard that they would often turn them loose to explore and create. Even so, Alpert suggested Jack Daugherty be signed to serve as producer for the Carpenters. This meant Daugherty would leave his twenty-thousand-dollar-a-year job at North American Aviation and go to work for A&M in hopes the Carpenters’ successes would warrant his stay. According to Ollie Mitchell, who played trumpet in Daugherty’s band, “Jack was lucky to be in a position to work with Richard, who seemed to do most of the real producing on the recording dates.”

  Most agree it was Richard who arranged and artistically produced the Carpenters’ albums. Daugherty was more of an A & R person for Karen and Richard. “Jack was very user-friendly as far as Roger Nichols and I were concerned,” remembers Paul Williams. “He’s the one who introduced all of us to the Carpenters. He was a very detailed man, not shy but very reserved. There was something almost ‘country gentleman’ about him at times. I liked him.”

  The Carpenters were immediately given run of the entire studio and its amenities. Recording began just a week after having signed with the label. At the time, eight-track recording equipment was standard, and for the first time Richard had a sophisticated recording studio at his disposal. For their first recording sessions, Richard chose to record a ballad version of Lennon and McCartney’s “Ticket to Ride,” from the 1965 Beatles’ album Help! Foreshadowing “Ticket” had been a demo of the Beatles’ “Nowhere Man” recorded by Karen in 1967. That recording took the up-tempo song and reworked it as a plaintive piano-accompanied ballad with a lead vocal full of melancholia. “Ticket to Ride” also employed this woeful approach, set atop a series of straightforward, arpeggiated chords from the piano.

  Rather than seeking out or writing new material, the Carpenters chose to record much of their existing repertoire, most of which was written during the Spectrum years. The album was finished in Richard’s mind long before they ever signed with A&M. Several songs were even lifted from the demos cut in Joe Osborn’s studio. “Your Wonderful Parade” was given a new lead vocal and the addition of strings, while “All I Can Do” was the original demo as previously recorded. “Don’t Be Afraid,” one of the songs Alpert had listened to on their demo, was re-recorded entirely. Osborn was recruited to play his trademark sliding bass on the album as he would continue to do on all future Carpenters albums. It was under his guidance that Karen was able to play bass guitar on two recordings, “All of My Life” and “Eve.” (Although Karen’s bass work may be heard on the original album mix, recent compilations feature Richard’s latest remixes, which have substituted Osborn’s more sophisticated bass lines.)

  Several elements of what would become the Carpenters’ trademark style were already in place on this debut. For instance, “Someday,” a collaboration with John Bettis, was one of Richard’s finest sweeping melodies. It was also the perfect vehicle for Karen’s mournful delivery. Richard sang lead on about half of the songs on the debut album, but his solo vocals became less prominent with each successive release until they disappeared entirely.

  Recording sessions for the debut album came to a close in the summer of 1969. An August release was slated but delayed when additional mixing was required. Jim McCrary, A&M staff photographer, took the photo for the record jacket, driving Karen and Richard up Highland Avenue and posing them by the roadside. Richard was never happy with the photo, which depicts the blank-faced duo holding a bundle of sunflowers. But when Herb Alpert picked out the cover photo, they were not about to argue.

  Offering was finally released on October 9, 1969. Frank Pooler recalls the night the album became available. “White Front Stores, a series of discount stores, were one of the first in the area that was selling it in their record department,” he says. “They played the whole thing that night starting at midnight over some local station, so we all stayed up. We had to hear this whole album being played.” The Southeast News, Downey’s newspaper, reported that the local White Front Store “couldn’t keep enough albums on the shelves. . . . A spot check of other local dealers revealed that the album has been moving well throughout the area.”

  According to music journalist Tom Nolan, “Offering tends toward being the sort of album many rock critics were encouraging at the time: a post-folk, soft-psychedelic, Southern Californian mini-oratorio.” The debut album did spark enough interest to be featured as a “Billboard Pick” in Billboard magazine, citing “fresh and original concepts . . . With radio programming support, Carpenters should have a big hit on their hands.”

  The release of the debut single, “Ticket to Ride / Your Wonderful Parade,” followed on November 5, nearly a month after the LP, and became a moderate hit. Covering a previous hit song and changing it up a bit was a way many artists achieved midchart hits. This proved to be true for Karen and Richard as well, and even a minor hit was a huge feat for a new artist. It stayed on the charts for six months, finally peaking at #54 by April 1970.

  With the bill for Offering coming in around fifty thousand dollars, A&M lost money on the Carpenters’ first release. That was not a cheap album to make, and initial sales of only 18,000 units left Karen and Richard somewhat nervous about their future with the label. A&M was going through a rough period in 1969, perhaps the worst year in their history, but despite the urging of others, Alpert was convinced the Carpenters had potential. He had no plans of cutting them from the roster. He felt their audience would “catch up to them” and admired the fact that they were so unique and driven.

  Instead of setting forth to record another album, Alpert suggested that the Carpenters record several tracks to be considered for single release. “The first album did exactly what I thought it was going to do,” he later recalled. “It takes a while for people to get onto a new artist and the frequency and the message that they are trying to send out. It didn’t surprise me that the public didn’t take to it. It was just a matter of time before they found the right song at the right moment and things turned around. With ‘Ticket to Ride,’ the idea that we were accustomed to that melody, and that they presented it in another format, was attractive to people. It wasn’t their breakthrough record but it certainly got them a little bit of attention.”

  The duo next laid down several tracks for possible singles: “Love Is Surrender,” a contemporary Christian tune with an altered secular lyric; “I’ll Never Fall in Love Again,” recorded by Dionne Warwick but not yet released as a single; and a cover of the Beatles’ “Help!”

  “THE THREE B’s.” Karen and Richard often cited the Beach Boys, the Beatles, and Burt Bacharach as their major pop music influences. The winding path to what ultimately became their second single began in December 1969 when the group played a benefit concert following the Hollywood premiere of the film Hello, Dolly! Opening the show with Burt B
acharach’s “I’ll Never Fall in Love Again,” the group was unaware the esteemed composer was in attendance. As Karen and Richard exited the stage, Bacharach was waiting with congratulations and an invitation for them to join him as his opening act for an upcoming Reiss-Davis Clinic benefit to be held at the Century Plaza Hotel on February 27, 1970. The invitation was extended to include various concert dates at which time Bacharach requested that Richard select, arrange, and perform a medley of Bacharach-David songs.

  As the Carpenters rehearsed furiously on A&M’s soundstage and the medley began to take shape, Herb Alpert came through with a lead sheet for a lesser-known Bacharach-David song entitled “They Long to Be Close to You,” first recorded by Richard “Dr. Kildare” Chamberlain in 1963. The song was also arranged by Bacharach for Make Way for Dionne Warwick the following year. Alpert had been given the tune several years earlier as a possible follow up to “This Guy’s in Love with You” but disliked the “sprinkled moondust” lyric and set it aside. Richard considered Alpert to be a great A & R man but felt the song would not fit in his plan for the medley, which was ultimately narrowed to include “Any Day Now,” “Baby It’s You,” “Knowing When to Leave,” “Make It Easy On Yourself,” “There’s Always Something There to Remind Me,” “I’ll Never Fall in Love Again,” “Walk On By,” and “Do You Know the Way to San Jose.”

  The lead sheet for “They Long to Be Close to You” remained on Richard’s Wurlitzer for several weeks. Though it was not suited for the medley, Richard saw its potential as a stand-alone song and with Alpert’s urging began to construct his own arrangement. Alpert owned a copy of Warwick’s recording but would not let Richard hear it. Aside from two piano quintuplets at the end of the bridge, he wanted nothing to influence Richard’s concept.

  Three very distinct arrangements of “They Long to Be Close to You” were put to tape, the first with Karen singing in a style similar to that of Harry Nilsson. The result sounded too contrived and was forcibly accenting the word “you.” For the second attempt Alpert suggested Jack Daugherty bring in pianist Larry Knechtel and drummer Hal Blaine. “I was Herb’s drummer with the Tijuana Brass,” Blaine explains. “He had a lot of faith in me.” Alpert felt Karen’s drumming lacked the muscle of competitive Top 40 records and knew Blaine would add the desired power for this recording. Agnes Carpenter did not agree. Karen, barely twenty, and Richard, soon to be twenty-four, still lived under her roof, where she kept close tabs on all their activities, both personal and professional. When she got word that Karen had been replaced by Blaine, she let him know of her displeasure. “I’ve seen so many drummers on television,” Agnes told him, “and Karen’s as good as any of them.”

  “Karen is a wonderful drummer,” he explained. “The problem is she doesn’t have the studio experience that some of us have.”

  This did little to appease Agnes, who was quick to praise her daughter when put on the defensive, but Blaine was not concerned with the parents. He was confident knowing Karen was happy having him in the studio, and that was all that mattered to him. “She had a lot of respect for me,” Blaine says. “We had an instant professional love affair because she knew everything I’d done, and she loved what I was doing on their records.”

  Although Blaine went on to drum on this and numerous Carpenters records, Knechtel’s piano performance proved too forceful for the mood of the song. Richard returned to the keys for a third and final approach. “Hold it, Richard,” Blaine interjected during his first Carpenters session. “Where are you going with this tempo?” This stunned Richard, who was accustomed to calling all the shots in the studio.

  “What do you mean?” he asked.

  “Well, are we going to play the beginning tempo or the middle tempo or the ending tempo? You’re kind of running away with it after the intro.”

  After several attempts with the same result, Jack Daugherty cut in, asking, “Well, what do we do about this?”

  Blaine suggested using a click track, which is essentially a metronome marking time in the musicians’ headphone mix. Like many artists, the Carpenters considered click tracks to be stifling, often resulting in robotic music. They finally gave in after Blaine explained it to be a reference tempo that need not be followed at every moment of a song. “After that,” Blaine says, “they wanted all their songs done with click track.”

  Herb Alpert was pleased with the third version of “They Long to Be Close to You,” and as the recording began to take shape, excitement over the new creation spread throughout A&M. Breaking studio protocol, A&M staffers interrupted sessions and pushed open the doors to studio C to ask, “What is that?” When engineer Ray Gerhardt cranked studio monitors to what he often referred to as “excitement level,” the reaction was overwhelming for all involved. “Thank God it didn’t fit in the medley,” Karen recalled of the song. “That was an instant thing from the minute it hit tape. It was really wild.”

  Despite the fuss, there was talk of releasing “I Kept on Loving You,” a recording with Richard’s lead vocal, as the A-side. Sharing both recordings with Frank Pooler’s choir, Karen and Richard conducted an informal poll of their college friends. “They played both sides of it for them to see which one they liked best,” Pooler says. While “I Kept on Loving You” was radio friendly and consistent with other hit songs of the day, “Close to You” refused to conform to Top 40 trends. As a result, Pooler explains, “The choir applauded more for ‘Kept on Loving You.’”

  Nichols-Williams compositions like “I Kept on Loving You” were frequently appearing as album cuts and B-sides around this time, but the songwriting duo had been hopeful to get an A-side with this second Carpenters single. “It was almost a joke that we’d die in anonymity and never having a hit single,” Williams says. “All I wanted was for ‘I Kept on Loving You’ to be the single until I heard ‘Close to You.’ They put ours on the B-side, and it was one of the greatest free rides of all time. They were both really fine records, but ‘Close to You’ just proved to be magical.”

  IN EARLY 1970, advertising agent Hal Riney hired Beach Boys’ lyricist Tony Asher to write a jingle for the Crocker Bank of California. After Asher broke his arm in a skiing accident he recommended Roger Nichols and Paul Williams for the job. “It actually turned out to be something very different,” Williams recalls. “Almost all commercials up to that point had pitch. They had copy, like ‘come to our bank’ or whatever. For this one they just wanted to show a little short movie of a young couple getting married and riding off into the sunset. They asked Roger and me to write a one-minute song that would accompany that movie.” With a budget of three hundred dollars and less than two weeks to write and record the song, Riney provided the songwriters with a bit of inspiration—his own slogan for the soft-sell campaign: “You’ve got a long way to go. We’d like to help you get there. The Crocker Bank.”

  Nichols and Williams were busy with other projects and put this one aside until just before the deadline. “I came in that morning and was working on the tune,” Nichols says. “Paul came in a little after that, and within ten minutes he had written the first verse.” Williams grabbed an envelope and scribbled on the back:

  We’ve only just begun to live

  White lace and promises

  A kiss for luck and we’re on our way

  Within a half hour they had written two one-minute jingles. After the original commercials aired, Crocker Bank executives wished to give copies of the song to their employees and asked the songwriters to make it a complete song. “We finished the complete song as an afterthought,” Williams says. “When we put all the copy together and added a bridge we had the song. You can see some imperfection in the rhyme scheme in the third verse. It doesn’t rhyme like it’s supposed to. ‘Grow’ and ‘begun’ don’t rhyme like they should because that was actually the first verse of the second commercial.”

  It was after a late-night recording session that Richard Carpenter caught the Crocker Bank commercial on television. Recognizing Paul Williams’s
lead vocal he figured it had to be a Nichols-Williams tune. “We got two phone calls right away,” Williams says. “The first was from Mark Lindsay and the second from Richard.”

  Richard immediately went to the publishing offices on the A&M lot and picked up a reference disc of the demo. Playing it in their road manager’s office, he was ecstatic to hear the bridge and third verse. He took the lead sheet to their next rehearsal where the group put together their arrangement. “It was about borrowing money, but for Pete’s sake it was a great thought,” Karen remarked in a 1970 interview. “I compliment the bank for having that much awareness of what’s going on.”

  So taken with “We’ve Only Just Begun” were the Carpenters that they considered holding back the slated single release of “Close to You.” Something about “Begun” stood up and proclaimed itself a hit song, whereas “Close to You” seemed more of a risk. But since “Begun” was still in its embryonic stages and not even put to tape, the single release of “(They Long to Be) Close to You” went as planned for May 1970. Richard felt the title was too wordy and opted for this parenthetical variant. “What do you think it’s going to do?” Alpert asked Richard as the two sat on the steps outside A&M Studios.

  “As far as I’m concerned,” Richard said, “it’s either going to be #1 or a monumental stiff. No in-between.”

  5

  YOU PUT US ON THE ROAD

  “(THEY LONG to Be) Close to You” entered the Hot 100 at #56, the highest debut of the week ending June 20, 1970. As the record moved up the charts, making stops at #37, #14, #7, and #3, the Carpenters set out to form a permanent “in person” band to travel with and support their live shows. Having recently been appointed principal tuba player with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, Wes Jacobs weighed two significant opportunities. He could play pop music with the Carpenters or continue pursuing his own dream of playing tuba in a major orchestra. “[Richard] called me, and he basically offered me a lot of money . . .,” Jacobs recalled, “but I realized that I would play the same concert two hundred times a year while touring with the Carpenters instead of two hundred different concerts per year in a symphony. I chose the symphony.”