Little Girl Blue (10 page)

The A&M Records lot itself was as unique as the label. The studio opened in November 1966 with a skeleton crew of thirty-two employees. Located at 1416 North La Brea Avenue in Hollywood, just south of Sunset Boulevard, the site once housed Charlie Chaplin's movie studio. Says songwriter Paul Williams, who came to the young and vibrant company in 1967, “There was such a sense of history just because of the location. It was charming in its look, and it reeked of Hollywood
history. I showed up in a stolen car. I was an out-of-work actor and stumbled into the songwriting career. They were looking for a lyricist for Roger Nichols, and I wound up with a career. It was one of those great accidents. One door slammed shut, and another one opened.”

Roger Nichols remembers A&M as an artist-friendly company and attributes most of the label's early success to the recordings of Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass. “Thanks to them, A&M really had money,” he says. “They didn't have money to burn but money to do things right. They treated people nicely. It was like the crème de la crème of the record companies at that time and a great place to be. There was a great creative energy to the lot, and the premise of the company was that you could pretty much do whatever you wanted to. When I was asked to record for A&M they said, ‘Make whatever kind of record you want to.' That was unique. I don't know where you'd go to find that today. There wasn't so much control of the product.”

Nichols and others around A&M were acquainted with Jack Daugherty, a Cincinnati-born musician who worked at North American Aviation in Downey, where he made presentations detailing the company's work with the Apollo program. Daugherty worked part time as a music copyist and in his spare time wrote counterpoint exercises and chorales. It was while working at North American that he received a copy of the Carpenters' demo. “
I had it for about
two months,” he recalled in a feature for
High Fidelity
, “and every once in a while I'd listen again. That's a pretty good test.”

Daugherty visited A&M's publishing office almost every week to drop off lead sheets he had prepared for Chuck Kaye, head of Almo/Irving Music, A&M's publishing arm. “You have to hear this group,” Daugherty told Roger Nichols. “They're a brother and sister. Call themselves Carpenters.” But it was Daugherty's friend, Tijuana Brass guitarist John Pisano, who ultimately handed the Carpenters' demo tape to Herb Alpert. “
I put on the tape
, and I was really knocked out with the sound of Karen's voice to start with,” Alpert said in 1994. “It touched me. It had nothing to do with what was happening in the market at that moment, but that's what touched me even more. I felt like it was time.”

Manager Ed Sulzer contacted Richard and let him know that Alpert had heard their demo, loved their sound, and wanted Carpenters on the A&M Records roster. The standard recording contract outlined a 7 percent royalty on all record sales and an advance of ten thousand dollars. Karen and Richard were thrilled, but timing posed a problem. Only days earlier they signed with the J. Walter Thompson agency's “Going Thing” campaign for Ford. Though they were grateful for the opportunity and honor, the two asked for release from the contract, each surrendering the fifty thousand dollars and new car. A recording contract with a major label like A&M had the potential for longevity. John and Tom Bähler understood the dilemma and convinced J. Walter Thompson to let Karen and Richard out of their contracts.

Herb Alpert and Jerry Moss took great pride in their artists, “
encouraging them to reach
their creative potential,” as they wrote years later in
From Brass to Gold
, an exhaustive A&M Records discography. “We looked for artists who had a strong sense of themselves musically and surrounded them with an environment and people who could help them express their unique talents.” For Alpert, musical honesty and sincerity took priority over potential sales when considering a new artist. “
It doesn't matter
if they're a jazz musician, a classical musician, or rap or pop,” he explained. “I think the real measure is if you are really doing it from your heart. The music that the Carpenters made was straight from their hearts. Richard was and is a real student of the record business. He knows a good song, he knows where to record it, he knows the musicians. Karen had this extraordinary voice, and they put the right combination together, and it was touching.”

It was Jerry Moss who officially signed the Carpenters to A&M, just before noon on Tuesday, April 22, 1969. “You think we could meet Herb?” Ed Sulzer asked. Alpert entered, greeted his new acquisitions, and said, “Let's hope we have some hits!”

A&M DID
not micromanage their artists, even the newest and youngest on the roster. They held their artists in such high regard that they would often turn them loose to explore and create. Even so, Alpert suggested
Jack Daugherty be signed to serve as producer for the Carpenters. This meant Daugherty would leave his twenty-thousand-dollar-a-year job at North American Aviation and go to work for A&M in hopes the Carpenters' successes would warrant his stay. According to Ollie Mitchell, who played trumpet in Daugherty's band, “Jack was lucky to be in a position to work with Richard, who seemed to do most of the real producing on the recording dates.”

Most agree it was Richard who arranged and artistically produced the Carpenters' albums. Daugherty was more of an A & R person for Karen and Richard. “Jack was very user-friendly as far as Roger Nichols and I were concerned,” remembers Paul Williams. “He's the one who introduced all of us to the Carpenters. He was a very detailed man, not shy but very reserved. There was something almost ‘country gentleman' about him at times. I liked him.”

The Carpenters were immediately given run of the entire studio and its amenities. Recording began just a week after having signed with the label. At the time, eight-track recording equipment was standard, and for the first time Richard had a sophisticated recording studio at his disposal. For their first recording sessions, Richard chose to record a ballad version of Lennon and McCartney's “Ticket to Ride,” from the 1965 Beatles' album
Help!
Foreshadowing “Ticket” had been a demo of the Beatles' “Nowhere Man” recorded by Karen in 1967. That recording took the up-tempo song and reworked it as a plaintive piano-accompanied ballad with a lead vocal full of melancholia. “Ticket to Ride” also employed this woeful approach, set atop a series of straightforward, arpeggiated chords from the piano.

Rather than seeking out or writing new material, the Carpenters chose to record much of their existing repertoire, most of which was written during the Spectrum years. The album was finished in Richard's mind long before they ever signed with A&M. Several songs were even lifted from the demos cut in Joe Osborn's studio. “Your Wonderful Parade” was given a new lead vocal and the addition of strings, while “All I Can Do” was the original demo as previously recorded. “Don't Be Afraid,” one of the songs Alpert had listened to on their demo, was re-recorded entirely. Osborn was recruited to play his trademark sliding bass on the album as he would continue to do on all future Carpenters
albums. It was under his guidance that Karen was able to play bass guitar on two recordings, “All of My Life” and “Eve.” (Although Karen's bass work may be heard on the original album mix, recent compilations feature Richard's latest remixes, which have substituted Osborn's more sophisticated bass lines.)

Several elements of what would become the Carpenters' trademark style were already in place on this debut. For instance, “Someday,” a collaboration with John Bettis, was one of Richard's finest sweeping melodies. It was also the perfect vehicle for Karen's mournful delivery. Richard sang lead on about half of the songs on the debut album, but his solo vocals became less prominent with each successive release until they disappeared entirely.

Recording sessions for the debut album came to a close in the summer of 1969. An August release was slated but delayed when additional mixing was required. Jim McCrary, A&M staff photographer, took the photo for the record jacket, driving Karen and Richard up Highland Avenue and posing them by the roadside. Richard was never happy with the photo, which depicts the blank-faced duo holding a bundle of sunflowers. But when Herb Alpert picked out the cover photo, they were not about to argue.

Offering
was finally released on October 9, 1969. Frank Pooler recalls the night the album became available. “White Front Stores, a series of discount stores, were one of the first in the area that was selling it in their record department,” he says. “They played the whole thing that night starting at midnight over some local station, so we all stayed up. We had to hear this whole album being played.”
The Southeast News
, Downey's newspaper, reported that the local White Front Store “
couldn't keep enough albums
on the shelves. . . . A spot check of other local dealers revealed that the album has been moving well throughout the area.”

According to music journalist Tom Nolan, “
Offering
tends toward
being the sort of album many rock critics were encouraging at the time: a post-folk, soft-psychedelic, Southern Californian mini-oratorio.” The debut album did spark enough interest to be featured as a “Billboard Pick” in
Billboard
magazine, citing “
fresh and original concepts
. . . With radio programming support, Carpenters should have a big hit on their hands.”

The release of the debut single, “Ticket to Ride / Your Wonderful Parade,” followed on November 5, nearly a month after the LP, and became a moderate hit. Covering a previous hit song and changing it up a bit was a way many artists achieved midchart hits. This proved to be true for Karen and Richard as well, and even a minor hit was a huge feat for a new artist. It stayed on the charts for six months, finally peaking at #54 by April 1970.

With the bill for
Offering
coming in around fifty thousand dollars, A&M lost money on the Carpenters' first release. That was not a cheap album to make, and initial sales of only 18,000 units left Karen and Richard somewhat nervous about their future with the label. A&M was going through a rough period in 1969, perhaps the worst year in their history, but despite the urging of others, Alpert was convinced the Carpenters had potential. He had no plans of cutting them from the roster. He felt their audience would “catch up to them” and admired the fact that they were so unique and driven.

Instead of setting forth to record another album, Alpert suggested that the Carpenters record several tracks to be considered for single release. “
The first album did
exactly what I thought it was going to do,” he later recalled. “It takes a while for people to get onto a new artist and the frequency and the message that they are trying to send out. It didn't surprise me that the public didn't take to it. It was just a matter of time before they found the right song at the right moment and things turned around. With ‘Ticket to Ride,' the idea that we were accustomed to that melody, and that they presented it in another format, was attractive to people. It wasn't their breakthrough record but it certainly got them a little bit of attention.”

The duo next laid down several tracks for possible singles: “Love Is Surrender,” a contemporary Christian tune with an altered secular lyric; “I'll Never Fall in Love Again,” recorded by Dionne Warwick but not yet released as a single; and a cover of the Beatles' “Help!”

“T
HE
T
HREE
B's.” Karen and Richard often cited the Beach Boys, the Beatles, and Burt Bacharach as their major pop music influences. The
winding path to what ultimately became their second single began in December 1969 when the group played a benefit concert following the Hollywood premiere of the film
Hello, Dolly!
Opening the show with Burt Bacharach's “I'll Never Fall in Love Again,” the group was unaware the esteemed composer was in attendance. As Karen and Richard exited the stage, Bacharach was waiting with congratulations and an invitation for them to join him as his opening act for an upcoming Reiss-Davis Clinic benefit to be held at the Century Plaza Hotel on February 27, 1970. The invitation was extended to include various concert dates at which time Bacharach requested that Richard select, arrange, and perform a medley of Bacharach-David songs.