It's that time of year when Karen Carpenter's beautiful voice graces the airwaves all around the world for the holiday season. We'll be hearing "Merry Christmas Darling" and "There's No Place Like) Home For The Holidays" on a daily basis... oh and it will be holiday heaven!
The season also represents an increased amount of CD sales for
Carpenters, primarily “Christmas Portrait.” Last year the album sold
extremely well and made it to and new peak position of #114 on
Billboard’s Top 200 album chart. This year we aim at putting the album
into the Top 100. The only way we can do this is if every single
die-hard Carpenters fan gets involved.
In order to get all the fans involved I have started a campaign to Put Christmas Portrait into the Top 100. It is headquartered at my website leadsister.com the URL to the campaign ishttp://leadsister.com/?page_id=597
Please visit the campaign page and help us to get our cherished "Chritmas Portrait" into the top 100. And please share the headquarters URL with everyone you know. Let's do it... Let's put "Christmas Portrait" into the Top 100 this year!
This petition requests that Richard produce Karen’s
remaining unreleased songs.Let
Richard know that if he agrees, fans worldwide will welcome this special
tribute album dedicated to the memory of Karen.
Karen Carpenter who rose to fame in 1970 with her brother
Richard Carpenter in the band Carpenters decided to record a solo album in 1979
when her brother entered rehab for a prescription drug addiction. She employed
famed producer Phil Ramone to produce her album. Many well known musicians at
the time contributed to her album including Rod Temperton, Bob James, Russell
javors (Billy Joel Band), Liberty DeVitto (Billy Joel Band), Louis Johnson
(Brother’s Johnson) and several others. Due to differences in viewpoints the
album was shelved. For many years Karen Carpenter fans speculated on the album
and fially in 1996 it was released to the public. To date the album has sold
more than one million copies worldwide and is a favorite amongst Karen
Carpenter fans.
The following article is a brief "behind the music" history of some of
the musicians who helped to shape Karen’s solo album.
The Brothers Johnson features bass player Louis Johnson who
also played bass on Karen’s album. “All About The Heaven” is featured on the
Brothers Johnson’s 1980 album “Light Up The Night” which includes many of the
same musicians on KC’s album and was written by Rod Temperton, who was a major
contributor to KC’s album. Temperton wrote many of the songs on KC’s album
including “If We Try”.
* A little trivia: Louis Johnson developed a crush on Karen while working on her solo album.
Jazz musician Bob James arranged and orchestrated several of
the songs on KC’s album as well as playing keyboards. In 1980 he released his
album “H” which includes many of the same musicians that were on KC’s album.
Listen to Bob James’ keyboard work on “The Walkman”, it sounds very similar to
what we hear on “Remember When Lovin’ Took All Night” and other KC tracks.
Producer Phil Ramone was working on Billy Joel’s “Glass
Houses” album at the same time as he was working with KC on her album. The bulk
of Billy Joel’s backing band (Dave Brown, Libery DeVitto, Doug Stegmeyer and
Russell Javors) performed on almost all the tracks on Karen’s album. Ruseel
Javors also wrote “All Because Of You” and “Still In Love With You”. Engineers
Jim Boyer and Bradshaw Leigh worked on both Joel’s and Carpenter’s albums.
Billy Joel’s “It’s Still Rock and Roll To Me” contains the same sort of new
wave drive as Karen’s “Still In Love With You”.
Michael Jackson’s “Off The Wall” was released at the time
that Karen was recording her album. Rod Temperton was a major contributor to
Jackson’s album having written three of the tracks and also arranging some of
the musical and vocal tracks. Louis Johnson played bass on both albums. Karen’s
one time boyfriend, Tom Bahler, wrote the song “She’s Out Of My Life”, which
was rumored to have been written about his breakup with Karen. Rod Temperton
originally wrote the song “Rock With You” for Karen to record on her solo
album, but she rejected the song and Jackson recorded it instead and took the
song to #1.
From 1976 to 1977 Heatwave was a hot commodity making hits
with the classics “Boogie Nights”, “Always and Forever” and “The Groove Line”.
All three hits were written by Heatwave’s main man Rod Temperton. In 1979
Heatwave released their album “Hot Property”, their first and only album
produced by Phil Ramone. Engineer Jim Boyer worked on the heatwave album as he
did Karen’s. Billy Joel bandmate Doug Stegmeyer’s brother Al Stegmeyer was an
assistant engineer on “Hot Property”. Take a listen to the track “Razzle
Dazzle”, the vocal arrangement at the end is very similar to the arrangement
Rod Temperton arranged for Karen on the song “If I Had You”.
