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| Karen Carpenter |
Karen Anne Carpenter was born in New Haven, Connecticut on March 2, 1950. Her brother, Richard, became a piano prodigy at an early age. In fact, their parents saw Richard as the talented one, even after Karen had become a star.
In June 1963, the Carpenters moved to Downey, California, a suburb of Los Angeles. When Karen enter high school, she joined the band and ended up playing drums.
A bit pudgy as a child, Karen started her first diet around the age of 17. Under a doctor's guidance Karen, who stood 5'5" and weighed 145 pounds, went on the Stillman Diet. She drank 8 glasses of water a day and counted fat grams. This started her life-long battle with anorexia nervosa. By September 1975, Karen's weight dropped to 91 pounds.
Richard formed a jazz trio in 1965 with college friend Wes Jacobs (a bass and tuba player). Karen joined The Richard Carpenter Trio on drums. Karen, Richard, and other musicians also performed as Spectrum, a group which featured a harmonious, vocal sound. They recorded many demo tapes in the garage studio of friend and bassist Joe Osborn, but with no studio success.
Finally, in April 1969, A&M Records signed the Carpenters to a recording contract. Their first singe, which reached #54 on the charts, was a cover of The Beatles' Ticket to Ride.Their next album, 1970's Close to You, featured two mega-hit singles, (They Long to Be) Close to You and We've Only Just Begun. They peaked at #1 and #2, respectively, on the Hot 100.
Karen Carpenter started out as both the group's drummer and lead singer, and she originally sang all her vocals from behind the drum set. Eventually, she was persuaded to stand at out front at a microphone while another musician played the drums, although she still did some drumming. By 1973, Karen's drumming lessened. Nevertheless, Karen always considered herself a drummer who sang-not a singer who drummed.
The Carpenters frequently cancelled tour dates, and they stopped touring altogether after their September 4, 1978 concert at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas. In 1981, after the release of the Made in America album (which turned out to be their last) the Carpenters returned to the stage and did some tour dates, including their final live performance in Brazil.
In 1979, Richard Carpenter took a year off to cure a dependency on quaaludes. Karen decided to make a solo album with producer Phil Ramone, something that she had always wanted to do. Her solo work was markedly different from usual Carpenters fare, consisting of adult-orientated and disco/dance-tempo material with more sexual lyrics and the use of Karen's higher vocal register. The project met a tepid response from Richard and A&M executives in early 1980. The album was shelved by A&M CEO Herb Alpert, in spite of Quincy Jones' attempts to talk Alpert into releasing the record after some tracks had been remixed. A&M made the Carpenters pay $400,000 to cover the cost of recording Karen's unreleased solo album, which was to be charged against the duo's future royalties.
Carpenters fans got a taste of the album in 1989 when some of its tracks (as remixed by Richard) were mixed onto the album Lovelines, the final album of Carpenters' new unreleased material. Seven years later, in 1996, the entire album, featuring mixes approved by Karen before her death and one unmixed bonus track, was finally released.
Karen unsuccessfully dated several men, finally marrying a real estate developer Tom Burris on August 31, 1980. The marriage was not a happy one, and the couple filed for divorce in November 1981.
The song Now, recorded in April 1982, was the last song Karen Carpenter recorded. She recorded it after a two-week intermission in her therapy with psychotherapist Steven Levenkron in New York City for her anorexia. The sight of Karen upon her return to California in April shook Richard and his parents, since she had lost a considerable amount of weight since beginning her therapy with Levenkron.
Her final demise is outlined in a http://www.wikipedia.com/ article:
"In September 1982, Karen's treatment—which had never convinced her family as being an effective method—took a sinister turn of events when Karen called her psychotherapist to tell him she felt dizzy and that her heart was beating irregularly. Karen was admitted to Lenox Hill Hospital in New York and hooked up to an intravenous drip, which would be the cause of her much debated 30 pound weight gain in eight weeks. Richard recalled visiting her in the hospital, saying "Karen, this is crap. Don't you understand? This is crap! You're going about this all the wrong way, this guy isn't getting anything accomplished, because you're in a hospital now!"
"Karen returned to California in November 1982, determined to reinvigorate her career, finalize her divorce and begin a new album with Richard. She had gained 30 pounds over a two-month stay in New York, and the sudden weight gain (much of which was the result of intravenous feeding) further strained her heart, which was already weak from years of crash dieting. During her illness, Karen also took thyroid replacement medication (in order to speed up her metabolism) and laxatives.
"On December 17, 1982, Karen made her final public appearance in the "multi-purpose" room of the Buckley School in Sherman Oaks, California singing for her godchildren and their classmates who attended the school. She sang Christmas carols for friends.
"Shortly after the new year, Richard tried to get through to Karen that she was still sick, saying many years later 'Karen had marvellous, big brown eyes. And there was just no life in them.' Speaking of a meeting with his sister and Werner Wolfen, the Carpenters' financial advisor, two weeks prior to her death, Richard said:
Karen was hot as hell at me for even questioning how she looked. And I told her 'the only reason I'm bringing all of this up, and talking to people...is because I'm concerned and because I love you.' And am I glad I said that because within weeks, that was that. She was dead.
"On February 4, 1983, less than a month before her thirty-third birthday, Karen suffered heart failure at her parents' home in Downey, California. She was taken to Downey Community Hospital, where she was pronounced dead twenty minutes later. The LA coroner gave the cause of death as "heartbeat irregularities brought on by chemical imbalances associated with anorexia nervosa." Her divorce was scheduled to have been finalized that day."
Watch Karen sing Rainy Days and Mondays.
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