Carole King is an American composer and singer-songwriter. She is the most successful female songwriter of the latter half of the 20th century in the US, having written or co-written 118 pop hits on the Billboard Hot 100 between 1955 and 1999. King also wrote 61 hits that charted in the UK, making her the most successful female songwriter on the UK singles charts between 1952 and 2005.
King’s career began in the 1960s when she and her first husband, Gerry Goffin, wrote more than two dozen chart hits, many of which have become standards, for numerous artists. She has continued writing for other artists since then. King’s success as a performer in her own right did not come until the 1970s, when she sang her own songs, accompanying herself on the piano, in a series of albums and concerts. After experiencing commercial disappointment with her debut album Writer, King scored her breakthrough with the album Tapestry, which topped the U.S. album chart for 15 weeks in 1971 and remained on the charts for more than six years.
King has made 25 solo albums, the most successful being Tapestry, which held the record for most weeks at No. 1 by a female artist for more than 20 years. Her most recent non-compilation album was Tapestry: Live in Hyde Park in 2017. Her record sales were estimated at more than 75 million copies worldwide.
Early Life
King was born Carol Joan Klein in February 1942 in Manhattan to a Jewish family. Her mother, Eugenia (née Cammer), was a teacher, and her father, Sidney N. Klein, was a firefighter for the New York City Fire Department. Sidney, a chemistry major, and Eugenia, an English and drama major, met in an elevator when they were students at Brooklyn College in 1936.
They married in 1937 during the last years of the Great Depression. Eugenia dropped out of college to run the household; Sidney also quit college and briefly took a job as a radio announcer. With the economy struggling, he then took a more secure job as a firefighter in New York. After King was born, they remained in Brooklyn and eventually were able to buy a small two-story duplex where they could rent out the upstairs for income.
Eugenia had learned how to play piano as a child and, after buying a piano, would sometimes practice. Carol had an insatiable curiosity about music in general from the time she was about three years old, so her mother began teaching her some very basic piano skills, but did not give Carol actual lessons. When Carol was four years old, her parents discovered she had developed a sense of absolute pitch, which enabled her to often name a note correctly by just hearing it. Sidney enjoyed showing off his daughter’s skill to visiting friends: “My dad’s smile was so broad that it encompassed the lower half of his face. I enjoyed making my father happy and getting the notes right.”
Carol’s mother began giving her real music lessons when Carol was four years old. Carol would climb up on the stool and be raised even higher by sitting on a phone book. With her mother sitting alongside her, Carol was taught music theory and elementary piano technique, including how to read notation and execute proper note timing. King wanted to learn as much as possible: “My mother never forced me to practice. She didn’t have to. I wanted so much to master the popular songs that poured out of the radio.”
Carol began kindergarten when she was four, but after her first year she was promoted directly to second grade because she had an exceptional facility with words and numbers. In the 1950s, she went to James Madison High School. She formed a band called the Co-Sines, changed her name to Carole King, and made demo records with her friend Paul Simon for $25 a session. Her first official recording was the promotional single “The Right Girl”, released by ABC-Paramount in 1958, which she wrote and sang to an arrangement by Don Costa.
She attended Queens College, where she met Gerry Goffin, who was to become her songwriting partner. When she was 17, they married in a Jewish ceremony on Long Island in August 1959 after King had become pregnant with her first daughter, Louise. They quit college and took daytime jobs, Goffin working as an assistant chemist and King as a secretary. They wrote songs together in the evening.
Neil Sedaka, who had dated King when he was still in high school, had a hit in 1959 with “Oh! Carol”. Goffin took the tune and wrote the playful response, “Oh! Neil”, which King recorded and released as a single the same year. The B-side contained the Goffin-King song “A Very Special Boy”. The single was not a success. After writing The Shirelles’ Billboard Hot 100 #1 hit “Will You Love Me Tomorrow”, the first No.1 hit by a black girl group, Goffin and King gave up their daytime jobs to concentrate on writing. “Will You Love Me Tomorrow” became a standard
1960s
During the sixties, with King writing the music and Goffin the lyrics, the two wrote a string of classic songs for a variety of artists. King and Goffin were also the songwriting team behind Don Kirshner’s Dimension Records, which produced songs including “Chains” (later recorded by the Beatles), “The Loco-Motion” for their babysitter Little Eva, and “It Might as Well Rain Until September” which King recorded herself in 1962—her first hit. King would record a few follow-up singles in the wake of “September”, but none of them sold much, and her already sporadic recording career was entirely abandoned (albeit temporarily) by 1966.
Other songs of King’s early period (through 1967) include “Half Way To Paradise” [Tony Orlando, recorded by Billy Fury in U.K.], “Take Good Care of My Baby” for Bobby Vee, “Up on the Roof” for the Drifters, “I’m into Something Good” for Earl-Jean (later recorded by Herman’s Hermits), “One Fine Day” for The Chiffons, and “Pleasant Valley Sunday” for the Monkees (inspired by their move to suburban West Orange, New Jersey), and “(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman” for Aretha Franklin. The duo wrote several songs recorded by Dusty Springfield, including Goin’ Back and Some of Your Lovin’.
By 1968, Goffin and King were divorced and were starting to lose contact. King moved to Laurel Canyon in Los Angeles with her two daughters and reactivated her recording career by forming “The City”, a music trio consisting of Charles Larkey, her future husband, on bass; Danny Kortchmar on guitar and vocals; and King on piano and vocals. The City produced one album, Now That Everything’s Been Said in 1968, but King’s reluctance to perform live meant sales were slow. A change of distributors meant that the album was quickly deleted; the group disbanded in 1969. The album was re-discovered by Classic Rock radio in the early 1980s and the cut “Snow Queen” received nominal airplay for a few years. Cleveland’s WMMS played it every few weeks from 1981 to 1985, and the long-out-of-print LP became sought after by fans of Carole King who like the edgy sound of the music.
1970s, Tapestry
While in Laurel Canyon, King met James Taylor and Joni Mitchell as well as Toni Stern, with whom she would collaborate on songs. King made her first solo album, Writer, in 1970 for Lou Adler’s Ode label, with Taylor playing acoustic guitar and providing backing vocals. It peaked at number 84 in the Billboard Top 200. The same year, King played keyboards on B.B. King’s album Indianola Mississippi Seeds.
King followed Writer in 1971 with Tapestry, which featured new compositions as well as reinterpretations of “Will You Love Me Tomorrow” and “(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman.” The album was recorded concurrently with Taylor’s Mud Slide Slim, with an overlapping set of musicians including King, Danny Kortchmar and Joni Mitchell. Both albums included “You’ve Got a Friend”, which was a number 1 hit for Taylor; King said in a 1972 interview that she “didn’t write it with James or anybody really specifically in mind. But when James heard it he really liked it and wanted to record it”.
Tapestry was an instant success. With numerous hit singles – including a Billboard No.1 with “It’s Too Late” – Tapestry held the No.1 spot for 15 consecutive weeks, remained on the charts for nearly six years, and has sold over 25 million copies worldwide. The album garnered four Grammy Awards including Album of the Year; Best Pop Vocal Performance, Female; Record of the Year (“It’s Too Late,” lyrics by Toni Stern); and Song of the Year, with King becoming the first woman to win the award (“You’ve Got a Friend”). The album appeared on Rolling Stone’s “500 Greatest Albums of All Time” list at number 36. In addition, “It’s Too Late” was number 469 on Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.
Carole King: Music was released in December 1971, certified gold on December 9, 1971. It entered the top ten at 8, becoming the first of many weeks Tapestry and Carole King: Music simultaneously occupied the top 10. The following week it rose to No.3 and finally to No.1 on January 1, 1972, staying there for three weeks. The album also spawned a top 10 hit, “Sweet Seasons” (US No.9 and AC No.2). Carole King: Music stayed on the Billboard pop album charts for 44 weeks and was eventually certified platinum.
Rhymes and Reasons (1972), and Fantasy (1973) followed, each earning gold certifications. Rhymes and Reasons produced another hit, “Been to Canaan” (US No.24 and AC No.1), and Fantasy produced two hits, “Believe in Humanity” (US No.28) and “Corazon” (US No.37 and AC No.5), as well as another song that charted on the Hot 100, “You Light Up My Life” (US No.67 and AC No.6).
In 1973, King performed a free concert in New York City’s Central Park with 100,000 attending.
In September 1974, King released her album Wrap Around Joy, which was certified gold on October 16, 1974, and entered the top ten at 7 on October 19, 1974. Two weeks later it reached 1 and stayed there one week. Wrap Around Joy spawned two hits. “Jazzman” was a single and reached 2 on November 9 but fell out of the top ten the next week. “Nightingale”, a single on December 17, went to No. 9 on March 1, 1975.
In 1975, King scored songs for the animated TV production of Maurice Sendak’s Really Rosie, released as an album by the same name, with lyrics by Sendak.
Thoroughbred (1976) was the last studio album she made under the Ode label. In addition to enlisting her long-time friends such as David Crosby, Graham Nash, James Taylor and Waddy Wachtel, King reunited with Gerry Goffin to write four songs for the album. Their partnership continued intermittently. King also did a promotional tour for the album in 1976.
In 1977, King collaborated with another songwriter, Rick Evers, on Simple Things, the first release with a new label distributed by Capitol Records. Shortly after that King and Evers were married; he died of a cocaine overdose one year later, while King and daughter Sherry were in Hawaii. Simple Things was her first album that failed to reach the top 10 on the Billboard since Tapestry, and it was her last Gold-certified record by the RIAA, except for a compilation entitled Her Greatest Hits the following year and Live at the Troubadour in 2010.
