Little Girl Blue

by Randy L. Schmidt

  Also seeing release in 1995 was If I Were a Carpenter, a somewhat questionable but highly successful tribute album featuring alternative rock acts including Sonic Youth, Sheryl Crow, and the Cranberries. The collection sparked interest in Carpenters music among yet another generation of listeners, and co-producer David Konjoyan assured the project was honest and in no way done with a tongue-in-cheek approach: “While it’s easy to dismiss all of this as just more quirky campiness where the mediocrities of the past are celebrated as masterpieces of the present—‘Here’s a story of a man named Brady’ and all that—there seems to be more to it than that.”

  Richard approved of the tribute, even making a guest appearance on Matthew Sweet’s interpretation of “Let Me Be the One.” He felt Karen, too, would have appreciated the sentiments backing the project. “She’d like it for the same reasons I like it,” he told HITS magazine. “The people involved thought enough of our music or her talent to take time out of their schedules to contribute, and that there continues to be, after all these years, so much interest in our music.”

  The Carpenters revival wave crested in Japan again in 1996 with the enormous success of 22 Hits of the Carpenters. The collection included two of the duo’s songs that had been featured as opening and closing themes in a popular Japanese teen-oriented television drama called Miseinen. Interest in “I Need to Be in Love” and “Top of the World” quickly pushed sales of the album over three million copies. “In the U.S., alternative rock and grunge are becoming mainstream, but in Japan, young people really don’t want to listen to music that lacks melody,” explained Shun Okano, product manager for the Japanese record label, in a feature for Billboard. “They like the Carpenters’ pleasant melodies and beautiful harmonies. It sounds like something fresh and new to them.”

  Richard’s focus moved back to the United States when in 1998 a twenty-song collection entitled Love Songs rode the American album chart for six months. This success was enhanced by the airing of the highly acclaimed Close to You: Remembering the Carpenters documentary produced for public television (PBS), as well as other television profiles on A&E’s Biography and VH1’s Behind the Music. Additionally, Richard released his second solo album, Richard Carpenter: Pianist, Arranger, Composer, Conductor. The album sent him back on tour for a series of shows with orchestras in Japan and several in Southern California. Its only single, “Karen’s Theme,” received moderate play on easy listening radio stations.

  The Carpenters are one of only a few acts that made such an impact on the music scene in the 1970s and do not have a place in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. The museum has a reputation for inducting trendy acts based on the tastes of a select few executives, but even record mogul Mike Curb argues that the Carpenters were certainly catalysts for a musical trend during that decade and deserving of such recognition. “Their body of work was really good pop music with an edge,” he says. “It was very fresh, pop rock and perfectly produced, but always produced with just enough edge. It didn’t sound dated. It sounded fresh. When her voice would come on the radio, there was such a presence to those records that said this is not just a pop record, it’s pop rock. They were competing with rock artists right and left.”

  Whether the duo belongs in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame or not, interest in their music has never waned. In 2009 the Carpenters’ 40/40 The Best Selection, a forty-track compilation recognizing the duo’s fortieth anniversary, debuted in Japan’s Top 5. It was the highest debut ever for a Carpenters album in that territory and within a month went to #1. “Karen and Richard are the seventh American act to top Nielsen/SoundScan’s Japanese chart in the past five years,” revealed Paul Grein in his popular “Chart Watch” column online. “They follow Bon Jovi (Have a Nice Day and Lost Highway), Britney Spears (Greatest Hits), Destiny’s Child (#1’s), Linkin Park (Minutes to Midnight), Backstreet Boys (Unbreakable), and Madonna (Hard Candy). . . . Japan is the world’s #2 music market, behind only the U.S.”

  “WERE YOU angry about Karen dying and finishing off your career as a superstar?” The question, posed by a reporter working for a 1990 Daily Mirror feature, surely caught him off guard, but Richard Carpenter paused only for a moment before answering: “Not angry, I’d say disappointed. There’s nothing I’d rather be doing than making records with Karen. You know, when she died I actually had people saying that I should find another Carpenter. They said, ‘You own the rights to the name.’ I said ‘You’ve got to be kidding.’ Not for a split second would I have done that. There could never be another Karen Carpenter.”

  Richard has spent much of the last quarter century as a family man and patron of the arts in his community. On May 19, 1984, with best man Wes Jacobs at his side, he and Mary Elizabeth Rudolph wed in a private ceremony at Downey United Methodist Church. The couple had dated off and on for eight years. “[Richard] and Mary do not wish to commercialize their marriage,” wrote Rosina Sullivan, “so there will be no pictures available through the fan club.” On August 17, 1987, they welcomed their first child, a daughter, Kristi Lynn. This was the name chosen years earlier by her aunt Karen, who had hoped to one day have children of her own. The union of Richard and Mary produced four more children: Traci Tatum, born July 25, 1989; Mindi Karen, born July 7, 1992; Colin Paul, born July 20, 1994; and Taylor Mary, born December 5, 1998.

  Following a lengthy period of poor health, Harold Carpenter died of heart failure in 1988 on his son’s birthday, October 15, at the age of seventy-nine. Agnes Carpenter died November 10, 1996, at Good Samaritan Hospital in Los Angeles after a lengthy illness and complications following triple-bypass heart surgery. She was laid to rest alongside her husband and daughter in the family crypt at Forest Lawn Cypress.

  Tom Burris is remarried and resides with his wife and the couple’s son in Lincoln, California, where he manages Aberdeen Burris Contractors. No longer at liberty to speak of his relationship with Karen, he declined to be interviewed for this book. “There’s an agreement between me and the Carpenters where I don’t reveal anything,” he said in 2002. “That is primarily tied to personal information about the Carpenters, their finances, and things like that.”

  As construction of a new concert hall began on the campus of California State Long Beach, Richard Carpenter stepped forward with a one-million-dollar pledge. As a result, the 1,074-seat venue was named the Richard and Karen Carpenter Performing Arts Center. It was dedicated during a star-studded gala opening on October 1, 1994, which featured performances by Herb Alpert, Rita Coolidge, and Marilyn McCoo. The Carpenter Exhibit, a permanent display of awards and memorabilia, was added to the Center lobby in 2000, and on May 26, 2000, the university honored Richard with an honorary doctorate after his delivery of the commencement speech.

  Richard and Mary remained in Downey until 2000, when they relocated their family to Thousand Oaks, California. They soon gained a reputation as generous supporters of the local arts community after pledging three million dollars to the Thousand Oaks Civic Arts Plaza. In exchange for the contribution, a park in front of the plaza was named the Mary and Richard Carpenter Plaza Park. “We weren’t thinking about that amount when we had this in mind,” Richard told a local reporter, “but we liked the look of where the name would go.” In 2007 he and Mary were named Ventura County’s Philanthropists of the Year.

  In December 2003, Karen Carpenter’s body, along with the bodies of her parents, was exhumed from the crypt at Forest Lawn Cypress and reinterred in a new Carpenter family mausoleum in the Tranquility Gardens at Pierce Brothers Valley Oaks Memorial Park in Westlake Village, California. Entertainment Tonight explained that the cemetery in Cypress was more than an hour’s drive for Richard, while the Westlake Village location was only minutes from his home in Thousand Oaks. “With room for six,” they reported, “the 46,000-pound Partenope-style structure was constructed in Texas over seven months. It is polished sunset red with beautiful warmth and color and lively crystal patterns. Similar structures have a price range of $600,000.”

  Un
aware of the move, a number of visitors arrived in Cypress that Christmas to pay their respects but were shocked to find the empty grave. Forest Lawn employees were unable to disclose any details but offered a rather palpable statement: “Miss Carpenter is no longer with us.”

  “IRREPLACEABLE.” ALWAYS a master at crafting words into poetic song lyrics, John Bettis offered this one word recapitulation of Karen Carpenter. “Irreplaceable. Not just the voice, but the person. . . . She was just beginning to blossom as a person. There was so much there that very few people got to see: the sense of humor, the sense of life. There was a certain profundity to Karen. If you believe in all this old soul stuff, there was always a sense that Karen knew more than she had any right to know. She had a sense of feeling and understanding about people that was remarkable.”

  Olivia Newton-John cherishes her memories of Karen, their friendship, and their admiration for one another as fellow pop singers. She recalls her “perfect pitch, beautiful tone, beautiful interpretation of a lyric, and a very simple, very soothing sound” and says that the feeling in Karen’s voice “can’t be taught. It’s a gift that she had that came from within.”

  Recalling Karen as an incredibly spirited person, Phil Ramone expresses regret that someone so feisty and vivacious never fully succeeded in breaking free and establishing a singular identity. “Her dreams of what a family and her life could be weren’t accomplished,” he says. “The top two things in her life—interchangeably—were her music and her family. There’s no question how much she cared for her family, but they were a close-knit family with things that frustrated her. At the end of the day, no one really ever understood that she had some kind of an eating disorder. If life were reasonably fair, therapy would have been there for her ten years earlier. It just wasn’t there.”

  Not a day goes by that Itchie Ramone does not think of Karen or is not reminded of her in some way. “What can one say about losing your best friend?” she asks, struggling to articulate the void. “In terms of her voice and her music, I still have her there, but I miss the company. I miss her wit. She was very witty! I miss us pulling jokes on each other. What can I say? She will forever remain in my heart. She was Lucy and I was Ethel.”

  “I feel very, very robbed. We all do,” says Frenda Franklin. “Karen touched your life and embraced it with such laughter and fun and happiness. Her take on everything was so left of center, and she was special. It’s an overused word, no question, but not in her case. She really, really was as unique a person as her voice was unique. I don’t know how else to say it. You can’t replace that.”

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  IN WRITING this biography I have been assisted by hundreds of people and consider it to be a collaboration between the individuals who agreed to be interviewed and others who contributed to my research in a number of ways. Some shared articles, interviews, concert reviews, audio, and video footage. Others provided important documents, transcripts, photographs, and additional material. All played an important role in the telling of Karen Carpenter’s life story.

  Several important teachers supported my interest in the Carpenters as a youth and encouraged me to write about their lives and music: Elaine Garvin, Zonelle Rainbolt, Shannon Cunningham, Rebecca Gilchrist, and Billie Goetsch. I also wish to recognize several music educators who shared with me their passion for the art: the late JoAnn Carlson, Jennifer Wedel, Mike Plunkett, Suzanne Aylor, and Charles “Skip” Klingman.

  I am grateful to Chicago Review Press for believing in Little Girl Blue, and to my meticulous editors, Yuval Taylor and Lisa Reardon, whose passion for this project has remained strong. Their endless support and thorough attention to detail is greatly appreciated.

  Special thanks to artist Chris Tassin for his lovely rendering of Karen created exclusively for this book; to Dionne Warwick for her heartfelt foreword; to Petula Clark for her assistance; to Carrie Mitchum for inadvertently introducing me to Karen Carpenter’s life story and music; to Barry Morrow, who, in addition to providing files, script revisions, and other important documents, gave this project a much-appreciated change of direction; to Cynthia Gibb and Mitchell Anderson; and to Cynthia Cherbak for sharing additional script revisions and correspondence.

  My thanks to Karen’s childhood friends Debbie Cuticello and husband C.J. for years of support and for the guided tour of Hall Street and Nathan Hale School in 1996; to Frank Bonito for his encouragement and contribution of previously unseen photos; to Frankie Chavez for sharing his memories of Karen and her inscription in his yearbook; to Leslie Johnston, who recalled the Spectrum era; and to choral music legend Frank Pooler for his contribution of various resources and photos from his personal archives.

  Evelyn Wallace deserves a resounding thank-you, due in part to her willingness to recall enough “Karen stories” to fill eight audiotapes. I first met Ev in 1994. Three years later she personally guided me through the Carpenter estate at 9828 Newville Avenue, by then a time capsule akin to Elvis’s Graceland. (The property remained in the Carpenter family until June 1997. Sadly, in 2008 a large portion of the home was demolished.) Ev was the personal connection to the Carpenters for fans of their music for nearly three decades. Collectively, her fan club newsletters serve as one of the most comprehensive resources for information about the Carpenters’ lives and their music.

  Words cannot express my gratitude to two of Karen’s closest friends, Frenda Franklin and Karen “Itchie” Ramone. Extremely private and fiercely protective of her memories, Frenda (with rare exception) has not granted interviews regarding her friendship with Karen. As for Itchie, she became a cheerleader for my efforts with this book, just as she had been a cheerleader for Karen since the two first met in 1979. I am indebted to both Frenda and Itchie for their honesty and openness.

  My thanks to Carole Curb for years of support and for encouraging Frenda to participate after six or seven years of my subtle but persistent efforts; to Mike Curb for taking time from his busy schedule as head of Curb Records to talk with me; to Maria Luisa Galeazzi, who shared numerous photographs and made herself readily available by phone and e-mail; to Terry Ellis, who surfaced just in time to share his remarkable insight and stories; to Cherry Boone O’Neill for her memories and observations; to Olivia Newton-John, whose initial phone call succeeded in permanently brightening my life; to Phil Ramone for a great interview and several much-appreciated follow-ups; and to Liberty DeVitto, Bob James, Russell Javors, and Rob Mounsey for recalling the 1979–1980 solo sessions.

  Thanks to journalist Jon Burlingame, who interviewed Richard Carpenter on November 18, 1988. I appreciate Jon’s willingness to dig for the tape and am especially grateful for his permission to transcribe and use the interview in this book. Thanks also to John Tobler for permission to use transcripts of his in-depth interviews with Herb Alpert, Sherwin Bash, and John Bettis.

  Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following individuals and their respective institutions and organizations: Bob Garcia, former publicity director at A&M Records, for arranging a tour of A&M offices, studios, and the Chaplin soundstage in 1996; Jim O’Grady for research he conducted at the Downey City Library; Marilynn Hughes for records assistance at the Downey Police Department; Pamela R. Cornell at the Historical Research Center at the Houston Academy of Medicine-Texas Medical Center Library; Marsha Grigsby in the Office of the Los Angeles County Coroner; Michelle Dyson with National Medical Services in Pennsylvania; Bill Hosley of the New Haven Museum and Historical Society; Allen Rice of the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum; David Konjoyan and Paul Madeira of the Recording Academy; Storytech Literary Consulting and Brad Schreiber; Donna Honeycutt, George Redfox, John Vincent, and Frank Williams at the Downey Historical Society; Kristie French with the Frank Pooler Collection at California State University Long Beach; Connie Griffin at the Richard and Karen Carpenter Performing Arts Center; Lauren Buisson with the A&M Records Collection at the University of Southern California Los Angeles; and Brooke Megdal, founder/director of the Loving H
eart Center in Brentwood, California, for helping me to better understand anorexia nervosa and other eating disorders.

  In 1994 I organized the Newville Avenue Carpenters Mailing List, one of the first and largest online networks devoted to the Carpenters. Much knowledge was shared and many friendships were born during the group’s six-year existence. The fans are the experts, and I have learned so much from their willingness to share that expertise. Two generous fans in particular, Lindeigh Scotte and Cindy Ward, left us much too soon and too young. It is in memory of their giving spirits and kindness to all Carpenters fans that I dedicate this book.

  Many thanks to my team of experts—Amanda Abbett, Carolyn Allen, Donnie Demers, Sue Gustin, and Chris Tassin—who spent countless hours attentively poring over my drafts, fact checking, and offering insightful comments and suggestions. I consider their knowledge and input to have been invaluable, and their patience is greatly appreciated. Also assisting in the reading of various chapter drafts were Jeffrey de Hart, Robert Ingves, and Paul Steinberg. Photo research assistance was provided by Miranda Bardwell, Donnie Demers, and Jill Anne Matusek, and special thanks to Matusek and Leo Bonaventura for their generosity in sponsoring several important photographs that might not otherwise have been possible. My appreciation also goes to Paul Ashurst, who shared copies of Karen’s wedding scrapbook.

  I am indebted to Pecan Creek Elementary for providing me with a creative and supportive environment in which to work. In addition to my principal, Aleta Atkinson, and assistant principal, Emily McLarty, the staff, students, and parents have been a cooperative and encouraging captive audience.