Carole King.
Carole King
Pop music as we know it would be far different without the many lasting contributions of Carole King, who is more than a half century into her singular career as a songwriter, performer, and author. Indeed, this universally renowned and beloved figure has rarely been more active than during the last five years.
Carole King and James TaylorKing’s late-career whirlwind began in November 2007, when she and longtime friend and sometime musical partner James Taylor returned to the Troubadour—the famed West Hollywood venue that had nurtured them as gifted young artists and soon-to-be critical and commercial sensations—for a three-night, six-show run to celebrate the venue’s 50th anniversary. Those historic performances were documented in the Grammy-nominated, RIAA gold-certified Live at the Troubadour (Hear Music/Concord Music Group), featuring 15 songs and 75 minutes of video and audio, including intimate renditions of the pair’s most beloved hits. The CD+DVD was released in May 2010.
This memorable event was the inspiration for the pair’s 60-concert “Troubadour Reunion” world tour of 2010, which included three sold-out concerts at the Hollywood Bowl and another trio of sellouts at Madison Square Garden. During the tour, The Philadelphia Inquirer marveled that “King and Taylor managed to present an arena-size show that retained their music’s innate craftsmanship, intimacy, and soul while adding vigor, muscle, and showmanship.”
The Troubadour shows also inspired the Morgan Neville-directed feature-length documentary Troubadours: Carole King / James Taylor & The Rise of the Singer-Songwriter, which made its TV premiere in March 2011 on PBS’ American Masters, shortly after being released on DVD by Hear Music/Concord Music Group. “When we sprang out of the box,” King notes early in the film, “there was just all this generational turbulence, cultural turbulence, and there was a hunger for the intimacy, the personal thing that we did.”
King’s first-ever holiday album, A Holiday Carole, followed in November 2011. Produced by her daughter Louise Goffin, the album’s 12 songs artfully blended the sacred and the secular with an eclectic mix of standards and newly-written material, and found King ringing in the season everywhere from The Today Show and Late Night With Jimmy Fallon to the Christmas at Rockefeller Center tree lighting.
The crowning glory of King’s last half decade was the April 2012 release of her memoir, A Natural Woman—which prompted Vanity Fair to say, “America is having a Carole King moment.” USA Today described the book as “candid [and] endearingly chatty… [with] more humor and joy than pathos,” while the U.K.’s Independent hailed it as “intelligent, honest, self-effacing, well-written.” In the pages of A Natural Woman, which King wrote completely on her own, she shares her incredible story from her beginnings in Brooklyn to her groundbreaking achievements as a songwriter, as well as her first major performances with Taylor and her long years of environmental and political activism. On publication, King’s memoir instantly cracked the top 10 of The New York Times best-sellers list.
As a companion to Carole’s life story, The Legendary Demos was released by Hear Music/Concord Records. A previously unreleased collection of 13 recordings featuring some of her most celebrated songs, including “(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman,” “It’s Too Late,” and “You’ve Got a Friend,” the albumtraces King’s journey from her days as a staff writer at Don Kirschner’s Aldon Music in the early ’60s—where she crafted hit after hit for other artists—to the dawn of her own triumphant solo career in the 1970s.
To paraphrase one of her songwriter contemporaries, King has traveled a long and winding road during her life in music. She wrote her first #1 hit at the tender age of 17, penning “Will You Love Me Tomorrow” for the Shirelles with then-husband Gerry Goffin. The dozens of chart hits Goffin and King wrote during this period have become part of music legend, including “Take Good Care of My Baby” and “Run to Him” (#1 and #2 hits for Bobby Vee in 1961), “Crying in the Rain” (The Everly Brothers, #6 in 1962), “The Loco-Motion” (Little Eva, #1 in 1962), “Up on the Roof” (The Drifters, #5 in 1962), “Chains” (The Cookies, #17 in 1962, The Beatles in 1963), “One Fine Day” (The Chiffons, #5 in 1963), “Hey Girl” ( Freddy Scott, #10 in 1963, also Bobby Vee and The Righteous Brothers), “I’m Into Something Good” (Herman’s Hermits, #13 in 1964), “Just Once in My Life” (written with Phil Spector for The Righteous Brothers, #9 in 1965), and “Don’t Bring Me Down” (The Animals, #12 in 1966).
In 1960, King made her solo record debut with a song called “Baby Sittin’,” and two years later, her demo of “It Might As Well Rain Until September” made the Top 25 in the U.S., climbing all the way to #3 on the British charts. Lennon & McCartney were well aware of her work; they were quoted as saying that all they “ever wanted to be was like Goffin and King.”
In the late ’60s, soon after Goffin and King’s “(You make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman” was immortalized by Aretha Franklin, Carole moved to Los Angeles with her daughters, Louise and Sherry, setting up house in Laurel Canyon and forming The City, who released one album, 1968’s Now That Everything’s Been Said. King released her first solo album, Writer, in 1970.
It was 1971’s Tapestry that took King to the pinnacle, though. It spoke personally to every one of her contemporaries and provided the spiritual musical backdrop to the decade. While King was in the studio recording Tapestry, Taylor recorded King’s “You’ve Got a Friend,” taking the song all the way to #1.
In a first for a female writer/artist, Tapestry won all three of the key Grammy Awards—record, song and album of the year—as well as best female vocalist honors for King. With more than 25 million units sold, Tapestry remained the best-selling album by a female artist for a quarter century, and King went on to amass three other platinum and seven gold albums.
In 1987, King was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame, and, a year later, Goffin and King were awarded the National Academy of Songwriters’ Lifetime Achievement Award. In 1990, the duo was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and in 2002, King was honored with the prestigious Mercer Award from the Songwriters Hall of Fame. Two years later, Goffin and King received the Trustee Award from the Recording Academy.
Carole KingIn addition to her continuously evolving musical career, King, who has lived on an Idaho ranch since the early ’80s, is actively involved with environmental organizations in support of forest wilderness preservation.
To date, more than 400 of her compositions have been recorded by over 1,000 artists, resulting in 100 hit singles. Now 70 and still full of life, Carole King is without question the most successful and revered female songwriter in pop music history.
Carole King
Artist Biography by Jason Ankeny
While the landmark Tapestry album earned her superstar status, singer/songwriter Carole King had already firmly established herself as one of pop music's most gifted and successful composers, with work recorded by everyone from the Beatles to Aretha Franklin. Born Carole Klein on February 9, 1942 in Brooklyn, New York, she began playing piano at the age of four, and formed her first band, the vocal quartet the Co-Sines, while in high school. A devotee of the composing team of Jerry Lieber and Mike Stoller (the duo behind numerous hits for Elvis Presley, the Coasters, and Ben E. King), she became a fixture at influential DJ Alan Freed's local rock & roll shows; while attending Queens College, she fell in with budding songwriters Paul Simon and Neil Sedaka as well as Gerry Goffin, with whom she forged a writing partnership.
In 1959, Sedaka scored a hit with "Oh! Carol," written in her honor; King cut an answer record, "Oh! Neil," but it stiffed. She and Goffin, who eventually married, began writing under publishers Don Kirshner and Al Nevins in the famed pop songwriting house the Brill Building, where they worked alongside the likes of Doc Pomus, Mort Shuman, Jeff Barry, Ellie Greenwich, and countless others. In 1961, Goffin and King scored their first hit with the Shirelles' chart-topping "Will You Love Me Tomorrow"; their next effort, Bobby Vee's "Take Good Care of My Baby," also hit number one, as did "The Loco-Motion," recorded by their babysitter, Little Eva. Together, the couple wrote over 100 chart hits in a vast range of styles, including the Chiffons' "One Fine Day," the Monkees' "Pleasant Valley Sunday," the Drifters' "Up on the Roof," the Cookies' "Chains" (later covered by the Beatles), Aretha Franklin's "(You Make Me Feel) Like a Natural Woman," and the Crystals' controversial "He Hit Me (And It Felt Like a Kiss)."
King also continued her attempts to mount a solo career, but scored only one hit, 1962's "It Might as Well Rain Until September." In the mid-'60s she, Goffin, and columnist Al Aronowitz founded their own short-lived label, Tomorrow Records; Charles Larkey, the bassist for the Tomorrow group the Myddle Class, eventually became King's second husband after her marriage to Goffin dissolved. She and Larkey later moved to the West Coast, where in 1968 they founded the City, a trio rounded out by New York musician Danny Kortchmar. The City recorded one LP, Now That Everything's Been Said, but did not tour due to King's stage fright; as a result, the album was a commercial failure, although it did feature songs later popularized by the Byrds ("Wasn't Born to Follow"), Blood, Sweat & Tears ("Hi-De-Ho"), and James Taylor ("You've Got a Friend")
Taylor and King ultimately became close friends, and he encouraged her to pursue a solo career. Released in 1970, Writer proved a false start, but in 1971 she released Tapestry, which stayed on the charts for over six years and was the best-selling album of the era. A quiet, reflective work that proved seminal in the development of the singer/songwriter genre, Tapestry also scored a pair of hit singles, "So Far Away" and the chart-topping "It's Too Late," whose flip side, "I Feel the Earth Move," garnered major airplay as well. Issued in 1971, Music also hit number one, and generated the hit "Sweet Seasons"; 1972's Rhymes & Reasons reached number two on the charts, and 1974's Wrap Around Joy, which featured the hit "Jazzman," hit the number one spot.
In 1975, King and Goffin reunited to write Thoroughbred, which also featured contributions from James Taylor, David Crosby, and Graham Nash. After 1977's Simple Things, she mounted a tour with the backing group Navarro and married her frequent songwriting partner Rick Evers, who died a year later of a heroin overdose. Pearls, a collection of performances of songs written during her partnership with Goffin, was released in 1980 and was her last significant hit, and King soon moved to a tiny mountain village in Idaho, where she became active in the environmental movement. After 1983's Speeding Time, she took a six-year hiatus from recording before releasing City Streets, which featured guest Eric Clapton. In 2001, she returned with Love Makes the World, a self-released disc on her own Rockingale label. Four years passed before her next record, The Living Room Tour, a double-disc set documenting her intimate 2004-2005 tour that found her revisiting songs from throughout her career with only her piano and acoustic guitars as accompaniment.
King joined longtime friend James Taylor for a co-starring show at L.A.'s famed Troubadour venue in 2007, and the pair followed it with several more shows, resulting in the Live at the Troubadour release in 2010. King released her first-ever Christmas album, A Holiday Carole, through the Hear Music/Concord Music Group on November 1, 2011. In 2013, King received a remarkable show business accolade -- her life became the basis for a Broadway musical, Beautiful: The Carole King Musical, which followed her professional and personal life in the '60s and '70s. The show opened on Broadway in January 2014, with a score dominated by King's hit songs, and an original cast album appeared the following May. The next year, King was a Kennedy Center Honoree, and in 2016 she played the entirety of Tapestry at the British Summer Time Festival in Hyde Park.
ΠΗΓΕΣ-ΠΑΡΑΠΟΜΠΕΣ:
Carole King 1971
( Pied Piper )
Carole King In Concert 1993
( saiannex)
Carole King: You've got a friend
(Mirelladue )
Carole King: Chains
( Cal Vid)
Carole King and James Taylor: ''Live at the Troubadour'', 2010
( Ken Davis)
Carole King: The Best Of Carole King -Album 2007
(The Best Of Carole King, MM668™)
1.So Far Away 00:00
2.I Feel The Earth Move 03:57
3.You've Got A Friend 06:56
4.It's Too Late 12:06
5.Sweet Seasons 16:01
6.Will You Love Me Tomorrow? 19:17
7.Brother, Brother 23:30
8.Only Love Is Real 26:30
9.It's Going To Take Some Time 30:03
10.Beautiful 33:39
11.Jazzman 36:47
12.Nightingale 40:34
13.Been To Canaan 44:12
14.Some Kind Of Wonderful 47:52
15.Carry Your Load 50:59
16.Smackwater Jack 53:51
17.Corazon 57:35
18.Up On The Roof 01:01:34
19.Music 01:05:13
20.Home Again 01:09:05
21.(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman 01:11:36
Carole King: I Feel The Earth Move
Carole King: Nightingale
Carole King:Believe In Humanity (Live)
Carole King:Pocket Money
Carole King: SO FAR AWAY
( peruven)
Carole King: ΙT´S TOO LATE
( peruven)
Carole King: Brother, Brother
Carole King:"The Loco Motion"
Carole King:"It Might As Well Rain Until September"
Carole King: Pleasant Valley Sunday
Carole King: One Fine Day
Carole King: Corazon
( JazzBreakTV)
Carole King: An Uncommon Love
Carole King - Tapestry - Full Album.
(Carole King - Tapestry (Full Album), ΑΝΤΙΦΩΝΙΕΣ ΠΟΛΙΤΙΣΜΟΣ)
Side 1
1. I Feel the Earth Move – 3:00
2. So Far Away – 3:55
3. It's Too Late (lyrics by Toni Stern) – 3:54
4. Home Again – 2:29
5. Beautiful – 3:08
6. Way Over Yonder – 4:49
Side 2
7. You've Got a Friend – 5:09
8. Where You Lead (lyrics by Toni Stern) – 3:20
9. Will You Love Me Tomorrow? (Gerry Goffin, King) – 4:13
10. Smackwater Jack (Goffin, King) – 3:42
11. Tapestry – 3:15
12. (You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman (Goffin, King, Jerry Wexler) – 3:59
1. I Feel the Earth Move – 3:00
2. So Far Away – 3:55
3. It's Too Late (lyrics by Toni Stern) – 3:54
4. Home Again – 2:29
5. Beautiful – 3:08
6. Way Over Yonder – 4:49
Side 2
7. You've Got a Friend – 5:09
8. Where You Lead (lyrics by Toni Stern) – 3:20
9. Will You Love Me Tomorrow? (Gerry Goffin, King) – 4:13
10. Smackwater Jack (Goffin, King) – 3:42
11. Tapestry – 3:15
12. (You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman (Goffin, King, Jerry Wexler) – 3:59