Carpenters: The Complete Singles (A&B sides)

Carpenters ruled the pop charts from 1970 – 1975, and much has been written about Carpenters “demise” in the latter part of the decade, as well as Richard’s addiction to drugs and Karen’s tragic battle with anorexia nervosa, but what isn’t ever cited it this fact: despite the personal and ultimately tragic difficulties the siblings endured after 1975, the duo never stopped having radio hits during Karen’s lifetime. In fact, Carpenters had a top 40 hit on every album released between 1970 and 1981. That’s quite a run.

Richard Carpenter displayed a penchant for fussing over the duo’s recordings as early as their first album, as the first single, a cover of The Beatles’, “Ticket To Ride,” was a remixed version from the album as well as the B-side, a remixed version of their anti-establishment anthem, “Your Wonderful Parade.” A few years later, Richard also remixed the title song they recorded for the soundtrack to Bless The Beasts And The Children for inclusion in the duo’s 1972 album, A Song For You. The following year, the duo remixed a number of songs for their hits collection, Singles, 1969-1973, including the #1 single, “Top Of The World.”

In fact, Carpenters singles, including B-sides, were often different mixes from the album versions, which made singles releases by the duo all the more an event, and over the decades, fans have often bemoaned the fact that the original single mixes were not the versions included on the myriad hits collections that surfaced during the 1980s and 1990s, as brother Richard continued to tinker with, remix, and re-record parts of songs, like a painter who keeps returning to classic paintings to add another coat of color. While fans appreciated the new variations on old favorites, they missed hearing the versions of the songs they remembered hearing on the radio.

49 years after the duo started making records, super fans now have, in one compilation, the entire US singles collection, in their original single mixes, via the PBS-only, triple CD release, Carpenters: The Complete Singles. The collection was made available in the fall and winter of 2015 as a pledge gift for public television viewers. The collection includes all the legendary hits (“Close To You,” “We’ve Only Just Begun,” “Rainy Days And Mondays,” “Superstar,” etc.), as well as the lesser-known classics (“It’s Going To Take Some Time,” “Won’t Last A Day Without You,” “Only Yesterday,” etc.) as well as some of the biggest head-scratchers the duo ever released as singles (“Goofus” and “Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft”). 

Listening to The Complete Singles was revelatory for me, in that it presents a more accurate depiction of the duo’s significant contribution to popular music than the run-of-the-mill hits collections did, as it offers mostly unknown B-sides as well, which often featured Carpenter’s unusual (and even peculiar, at times) compositions and showcased the duo’s artsier, edgier side. Seriously. This collection chronicles the duo’s avant-garde early albums, the trend-setting hit albums, the late-1970’s shotgun desperation albums (which always contained hidden gems), and the last few albums, which found the duo lost in post Captain & Tennille, adult-contemporary hell, barely treading water while recycling Air Supply demo rejects. 

It’s a fascinating aural journey, and the B-sides are even more revealing than the familiar singles. Some of the standout B-sides include:

Your Wonderful Parade: a Carpenter-penned, anti-establishment rant and great drumming work by Karen.

I Kept On Loving You: another rare lead vocal from brother Richard, one of his best, and another great Williams / Nichols tune.

All Of My Life: legend has it that the demo of this tune is what convinced Herb Albert to sign the duo in 1969.

Mr Guder: Another anti-establishment tune written about Carpenter’s ex-boss at Disneyland.

Saturday: I heard this recently in a regional department store commercial, and it’s still catchy as hell.

Bless The Beasts And The Children: the duo recorded this title track at the request of director, Stanley Kramer. It was included as the B-side to the Rock-and-Roll Hall Of Fame-inducted track, “Superstar” and charted as a single in its own right.

Maybe It’s You: this Carpenter-penned ballad could have been another single from the Close To You album.

Crystal Lullaby: beautiful, deep cut from Carpenters best album, A Song For You.

Road Ode: written by Carpenters band members after a concert in Carbondale, Illinois. This tune described the toll-taking rigors of life on the road and chronicled the duo’s disappointing personal lives as well as foreshadowed the ultimate tragedy that lie ahead.

Heather: a melencholy piano piece also used in an aspirin television commercial campaign around 1973.

This Masquerade: a long-time fan favorite and lost opportunity of a single.

Happy: another lost single opportunity, written by band member, Tony Peluso and long-time Carpenter collaborator, John Bettis.

If I Had You: from Karen’s unreleased (until 1996) solo album, here in a superior, remixed form.

And beyond the revelatory B-sides, here’s a list of tunes that appear in unique, single mixes:

Ticket To Ride: different intro, fun piano part (mono mix)

Your Wonderful Parade: shortened spoken intro, clean ending (mono mix)

I Kept On Loving You: clean opening and sweetened background vocals by Richard

Merry Christmas Darling: original, raw vocal

Mr. Guder: shortened version

Crystal Lullaby: clean ending (doesn’t blend into “Road Ode”)

Road Ode: clean opening (doesn’t enter with “Crystal Lullaby” ending)

I Won’t Last A Day Without You: different vocal and rockier arrangement

Please Mr. Postman: different vocal and arrangement

Santa Claus Is Coming To Town: different vocal and arrangement, completely different sax line

Calling Occupants Of Interplanetary Craft: shortened, no DJ intro

Can’t Smile Without You: different vocal and arrangement

Christmas Song: different vocal and arrangement

Don’t Cry For Me, Argentina: shortened, deleted opera intro

Those Good Old Dreams: original vinyl mix, which differed from the CD version

Make Believe It’s Your First Time: deleted spoken intro

This is an essential collection for not only completests, like I tend to be, but also for the casual fan who wants an accurate overview of the duo’s true pop music legacy. Skip the standard hits collections (that often misrepresent the duo and/or skip essential hits and album cuts), support your local PBS station, and shell out a little more scratch for this one-of-a-kind collection.

“Passage,” by Carpenters

Richard and Karen Carpenter were, arguably, the most popular and influential North American pop music act of the early part of the 1970’s, placing a remarkable 15 top 40 singles in the first half of the decade and holding a ubiquitous presence in popular culture during that timeframe, with constant touring, television specials, guest appearances, and even shout-outs on The Brady Bunch! Seriously. The one-and-only Marsha Brady name-checked the Carpenters in the Davy Jones episode. Rock critics, on the other hand, while conceding raw talent and admitting fondness for Karen’s unmistakable vocals and Richard’s composing and arranging, universally hounded the duo throughout their meteoric success. And the reason? Carpenters were, simply put, not cool. After all, they were a nerdy brother-sister act from suburban Downey, California, and in the early-1970’s, Rolling Stone magazine cast them out of the “cool kids club.”

Rock-and-Roll Hall of Fame-er, Linda Rondstadt, recently noted with dismay how Rolling Stone magazine widely determined “rock cred” and peddled a “cooler-than-thou” posture in the industry:

That was sort of the attitude of wanting to get with the hipper side. But I never bought into that. It was so competitive and all about looking down at other people and trying to trip them up and make them look bad…Rolling Stone magazine really encouraged that attitude. It was kind of Puritanism, and I never liked it.

Carpenters’ 1975 album, Horizon, a departure from their early 1970’s, trend-setting style, was thought to be the album that would finally bring credibility to the duo, the anticipation of which ironically placed them on the coveted cover of Rolling Stone in the summer of 1974. In the winter of 1974, the duo released the first single from that album, the bubbly, and, in hindsight, throwaway remake of the Marvelette’s 1961 #1 hit, “Please Mr. Postman,” which itself hit the #1 spot in January of 1975, setting the stage for the coming-of-age for the pop duo. The follow-up single, “Only Yesterday,” was released in March of that year, reaching an anticipated #4 in late May (and serving as the duo’s last top 10 single in the U.S.). And while the Horizon album was released the next month, due to label delays and possible over-confidence, the next single, “Solitaire,” wasn’t released until July and only reached #17. The Horizon album only reached #13 on the album charts, signaling the beginning of the long-term downward spiral of the duo that plagued the siblings for the remainder of Karen’s short life.

Richard and Karen rebounded by dutifully (if not mechanically), returning to the studio that winter to record their follow-up, the paint-by-numbers approach of an album, A Kind Of Hush. The title tune was a cover of Herman’s Hermits 1967 top five hit, and Carpenters’ version eked to #12 on the pop charts, further indicating a drop in the duo’s popularity, being the first lead single from a Carpenters album to fall short of the Top 5 since the group's debut, while the #33 chart peak of the A Kind of Hush album was their first Top 20 album shortfall also since their debut. The subsequent singles from that album, “I Need ToBe In Love,” and “Goofus,” both fell short of expectations in the summer of 1976, peaking at #25 and #56, respectively.

All of this set the stage for their next album, Passage, of which Richard recalls,

I was hardly surprised then, when I heard from (A&M label boss) Jerry Moss, relating his concern about relatively lackluster sales by A&M’s biggest worldwide record sellers…us.  As an owner’s eyes fall on the manager when a fine baseball team doesn’t perform as expected, so the eyes of the record company fall on the producer when a successful artist’s record sales falter. This, by the by, is the way it should be, so I was perfectly willing to let someone else take over my role; it would be a lot less work for me and, as previously mentioned (Carpenter was battling addiction to Quaaludes at the time), I was not 100% myself. The problem was, not one major producer would sign on; radio was not quite as friendly at that time to our type of sound and to be honest, my track record on the whole was a tough act to follow. Accordingly, I remained producer, but I did try to approach this new project from a different angle, hence my selection of songs for this album made Passage a bit of a departure from our previous recordings.

“A bit of a departure” is putting it mildly. This album, to my ear, is a pull-out-all-the-stops, shotgun approach to record making and smacked of desperation and audience pandering. The duo, per Richard’s above recollection, was desperate for a MEGA hit record and made an album designed to appeal to everyone, and in doing so, made an album that appealed to relatively few at the time (but was not altogether unsuccessful, as singles “All You Get From Love Is A Love Song” and “Calling Occupants Of Interplanetary Craft” both scraped the surface of the Top 40 in 1977 as well as the surprise Country Top 10 hit, “Sweet, Sweet Smile," the following Spring). 

I’ll discuss the Passage album, here, song by song:

B’Wana She No Home: This jazz-fusion opener, while featuring a fun, funky, stylistic vocal departure for Karen, was a cringe-worthy, privileged slice of oblivious racism, where the narrator barks at her paid, brown-skinned help, “Got to learn these words, and I know you will, or I'll send you right back to Guayaquil,” and “I want you to speak the English right; I want you to smile and be polite…” Ugh. Gawdawful. Of the hundreds of funky songs out there at that time, why’d they have to pick that one?

All You Get From Love Is A Love Song: More along the lines of what one might expect from a Carpenters track at that time and featuring Tom Scott on saxophone, this song was understandably pulled as the album’s first single, reaching the top 40 (#35) in the summer of 1977. This jazzy pop tune, while not one of their best-known singles, features a playful, pre-MTV music video and remains a fan favorite.

I Just Fall In Love Again: If released in May, 1978, this old-fashioned love song would have pre-dated Anne Murray’s #12 hit by one year and would have easily gone as high on the Billboard chart, if not higher. A&M Records decided not to release it as a single, because it was considered too long for Top 40 radio stations to play at the time (it was just over 4 minutes). Instead, it remained a forgotten album track. Fun fact: Carpenters also recorded another would-be hit, “Trying To Get The Feeling Again,” in 1975, during their Horizon recording sessions, but they shelved the track, not seeing its hit potential, only to have Barry Manilow’s version peak at #10 the following year.

On The Balcony Of The Casa Rosada / Don’t Cry For Me Argentina: It takes over three minutes to get to Karen’s remarkable, higher-register vocal on this orchestral tune from Evita, but Carpenter’s performance on this track is, by my ear, the definitive version of this well-known song, which has been covered by, officially, and as of 2015, everybody. I’m glad they recorded it.

Sweet, Sweet Smile: The third and final single release from Passage, this Juice Newton tune (“Queen Of Hearts,” “Break It To Me Gently,” “Love’s Been A Little Bit Hard On Me”) was intended for Newton, herself, to record, but first went to Carpenters when Newton's manager played the demo for Karen, who brought it to Richard, who noted, "I liked it immediately...now there's one that, to me, should have done better than it did…I think if someone else had done it at that time, it would have been a bigger hit." Not that the song was a complete flop, falling just short of the American Top 40 at #44 and giving the duo their sole Country hit, rising as high as #8 on the Country chart and as high as #7 on the Billboard Easy Listening chart.

Two Sides: Another country-flavored tune, this particular track was a bit of a departure for the duo, as the background vocals on the verses feature a Karen duet (as opposed to their stacked vocals), something the duo initially tried on their previous album, A Kind Of Hush, with album tracks and fan favorites, “You” and “I Have You.” I suspect this song might have been a hit on the Country charts in the winter of 1977 or the spring of 1978 had it been released as a single.

Man Smart, Woman Smarter: Originally a calypso tune harkening back to the 1930’s, the duo’s funky little head-scratcher of a recording whistles, wheezes, jerks, pops, and burps (Literally. There’s an audible burp in there; I’m not kidding.). And after many years of wondering, “why this song?” I think I’ve recently landed on what might have been going on: the duo, always weary of their saccharine image (which, in hindsight, turned-out to be fairly spot-on), started pushing back (hard) against the “goody four shoes,” “Pepsodent Twins” image on which the rock press overly focused on, especially as more and more Top 40 stations ignored their “unhip” love songs. It was the mid-Seventies, after all, and the specter of Disco was rising with New Wave close behind. The Clash and The Sex Pistols released their debut albums that year, Elvis died in August, and fly-by-night acts like The Captain & Tennille had stolen the Carpenters’ pop crown two years previous by performing similarly silly (“Muscrat Love”) and/or irreverent songs (“Love Will Keep Us Together”).

I suspect songs like “Man Smart, Woman Smarter” (and “Goofus,” and “B’Wana She No Home,” and “Calling Occupants Of Interplanetary Craft”) were a strategic career move to show a less stodgy, more playful image. Bad call. And when it didn’t work (and after a stint in rehab for Richard and a shelved solo album from Karen), the siblings reverted back to formula on their follow-up album, 1981’s Made In America, and while it boasted their final top 20 hit, “Touch Me When We’re Dancing (#16), the album failed to find an audience, and subsequent singles only scraped the bottom of the Hot 100. Maybe the duo had run their hit-making cycle and (had Karen lived) were destined to spend the remainder of the 1980’s in no-hit, adult contemporary hell, only to reemerge in the 1990’s as an oldies act with a flukey hit single or two from a movie or an unexpected duet with Bryan Adams or Gloria Estafan. Who knows? Maybe they were onto something and could have had an unexpected and extended hit-making shelf life had they stuck with recording goofy songs like this one:

Calling Occupants Of Interplanetary Craft (The Recognized Anthem Of World Contact Day): Released as the second single to Passage, Carpenters’ version of “Occupants” climbed to #32 and was first released by Canadian rock group, Klaatu. John Woloschuk, one of the song's writers, noted the idea for this track came from an actual event: in the early 1950’s, the "International Flying Saucer Bureau" sent a bulletin to all its members asking them to participate in "World Contact Day," where, at a certain date and time, members would collectively send out, telepathically, a message to nearby visitors in space. The message began with, "Calling occupants of interplanetary craft…"

And a groovy, silly, space-age song was born. The duo have often noted that their song was well underway well before the “space craze” of the later part of the 1970’s, recalling taking a break from recording the song to watch Star Wars the week it was released. I was 6 years old hearing this song when my sister played it for my siblings and me on her wood-grained stereo. Tony Peluso’s reprised, “All Hit Radi-ooooo!” DJ bit from the Now & Then album was hilarious to us at the time, especially the “aliens” monotone, robotic voices and the mimicked, “ba-by” that bled into the first few seconds of the song. It was a laugh riot. Who could ever think these two wacky kids from Downey were nerdy?

The framed artwork for this album hangs in my office today; it’s probably their best album cover (in a career of poorly-conceived album artwork). But beyond being the least-known Carpenters album of the 1970’s and their first album since their 1969 debut not to make the Top 40, what most intrigues me about Passage is not the calculated approach to getting a hit record, nor the daring-to-questionable song choices, but it’s brevity, at only eight songs. Were they so burned out and second-guessing by then that they couldn’t add two more songs to make ten? Probably. 

To wit, a tender, unreleased track from the Passage sessions, “You’re TheOne,” an exquisitely performed ballad (and a potential 1977 top 40 hit) that finally surfaced on the 1988 CBS made-for-TV Carpenters movie, reiterated the questionable artistic choices the duo was making at that time, further exposing the fact that, in 1977, all was not well in Carpentersville. With “You’re The One” being brushed aside, one has to wonder what other lost gems might remain in the vaults? The relative failure of this album led the duo limping through the sessions for their unexpectedly triumphant (and essential) Christmas album the following year, and after that, a career free-fall from which they never recovered. Nevertheless, the album holds some of the duo’s most imaginative performances, Karen was still in terrific voice, and Passage is, unquestionably, the most adventurous album the group ever recorded.

“Now & Then,” by Carpenters

Now And Then was released in May of 1973 and is considered by many fans to be the duo's last album with the “classic” Carpenters sound. I’m inclined to agree. It featured two of their biggest hits, “Sing,” (#3, 1973) and the Carpenter-penned song about the early-1970’s “oldies” resurgence, “Yesterday Once More,” (#2, 1973), which became their biggest selling single, worldwide. While a bestseller at the time (and beyond the mysterious, trifold album artwork – is it a photograph? is it a painting? why aren’t they smiling – they were always smiling…? why is Karen’s face obscured? And their actual house loomed in the background, showing the upstairs bedroom window where Karen would collapse less than 10 years later, never to be resuscitated…), of their early albums, Now And Then tends to be their most overlooked and underappreciated these days, as it was, among other things, quirky, eclectic, eerie, joyful, eccentric, melancholy, silly, mysterious, and a TON of fun. In fact, I consider the album one of the most artsy in their canon (except, perhaps, their obscure and seldom-discussed debut, Offering, later repacked as, Ticket To Ride). The concept for Now And Then celebrated the “oldies,” as well as newer songs, having side one of the album consist of “contemporary” songs and side two focus on songs made popular about 10 years earlier.

The “contemporary” side was mostly that, I guess, except it featured a children’s song from television and a classic tune written over 20 years earlier, Hank Williams’ 1952 #1 Country smash, “Jambalaya (On The Bayou).” Hmm. I smell a concept fail. The duo wisely selected for side one Leon Russell’s, “This Masquerade,” which was an outstanding album track and remains a perennial fan favorite that probably should have been the lead-off single, or at least the follow-up to “Sing,” if, for nothing else, credibility purposes. And by the way, I love “Sing.” It’s simple. It’s sweet. “Sing. Sing a song. Make it simple to last your whole life long…” What’s not to love about that? But I’m guessing my fondness has more to do with my being 2 or 3 when it was ubiquitous on the radio that spring and it is a children’s song, after all, and Vh1 used it (affectionately, I think) on a promo a few years ago and it was from Sesame Street, and sigh…oh, what the hell? I just love it. The pretty piano instrumental, “Heather,” adds emotional depth to the proceedings on the first side, but (while absolutely beautiful) for the duo to record a song titled, “I Can’t Make Music,” at that point in their careers…it was just asking for potshots from rock journalists.

The “oldies” side consisted of a medley of the following early 1960’s tunes in this order: “Fun, Fun, Fun,” “The End Of The World,” “Da Do Run-Run,” “Dean Man’s Curve,” Johnny Angel,” “The Night Has A Thousand Eyes,” “Our Day Will Come,” and “One Fine Day.” Interspersed among the pop hits was Carpenters band member, Tony Peluso, playing the role of over-the-top radio DJ, complete with playful, shticky banter and even a “guess the golden oldies” radio contest. Peluso would reprise this role four years later as the DJ communicating with Martians (yes, you read that correctly) at the beginning of the duo’s 1977 top 40 hit, “Calling Occupants (Of Interplanetary Craft).” While certainly serving the concept of side two, in my view, the DJ banter pulls attention away from some remarkable vocals from sister Karen, most notably on “The End Of The World” and “Our Day Will Come,” which, in expanded versions, might have made exceptional singles.

In fact, the oldies/medley side contained some of Karen’s best vocal performances (an opinion the Reader’s Digest Collection vindicated some 25 years later, including the medley in remixed form and without the DJ shtick), with my only suggestion to the oldies side being that the siblings might have done well to include hits from back further, like “The Wayward Wind,” “It’s All In The Game,” “Que Sera, Sera,” “Chances Are,” and “You Send Me,” all which seem to have influenced the duo much more than “Da Do Run-Run” or “Dead Man’s Curve.” Who is with me on this?

Lambasted by critics upon its release, Now And Then was, perhaps understandably, but also unfairly judged as the artistic statement the duo wanted to make at that time. In reality, the album was hurriedly recorded amidst a breakneck schedule of touring and television appearances. Richard Carpenter wrote, “…as the limited time we had to record the album approached, it was clear to me that we had only enough material to complete one side of an LP, and even that was by completing a track we had recorded in 1972, ‘Jambalaya.’ Fortunately, we had an ace up our collective sleeve, resulting in a damn good album which became a worldwide bestseller: Karen and I introduced an oldies medley into our concert show starting in the summer of 1972, and it met with such an enthusiastic response, I decided to feature a version of it on side two of what would become Now And Then.”

This album was followed by more breakneck touring for the duo in 1973 and 1974, which gave them precious little time to record the highly-anticipated follow-up, Horizon (1975). In the year that followed and to keep the duo on the radio, their record label mined two more gems from their classic, 1972 album, A Song For You, “Top Of The World” (#1, 1973) and “I Won’t Last A Day Without You,” (#11, 1974) as well as a Christmas-themed single, a jazzy reworking of “Santa Claus Is Coming To Town,” late in 1974, but the true follow-up single wasn’t released until December of 1974, the duo’s final #1, a cover of the Marvelettes’ “Please Mr. Postman,” and another retread of the oldies theme, a motif they would continue to pillage (“A Kind Of Hush,” #12/1976, and “Goofus,” #56/1976) through their final album with Karen, Made In America (“BE-echwood 4-5789, #74/1982).

The follow-up album, Horizon, was an intentional departure, demonstrating that the duo was interested in expanding beyond the trend-setting, early 1970s sound that brung ‘em to the dance. Horizon was musically complicated and thematically sophisticated. It was an album for grown-ups, whereas Now And Then seemed to have been recorded with the kiddos in mind. Maybe as a result, it seems to be the last album the siblings recorded where they seemed to be having any fun, which makes it a bittersweet listen today. In fact, while successive albums had moments of levity, the later albums found the duo trying too hard: to have hits, to be hip, to sound “different,” to be taken seriously. But on this album, in this moment in time, the siblings seemed to be in high spirits, and their art reflected this boundless joy - blissfully ignorant of the tragedy that lie ahead. And if for no other reason, Now And Then is noteworthy for that.