The 1970s was truly a great, eclectic decade for music. You could witness bands as diverse as The Carpenters and Led Zeppelin [both bands debuted in 1969] emerge into totally different but very popular acts. The 60s, amidst the chaos of war and social change gave us a whole new musical landscape of creative sounds to choose from. The United States and England were simultaneously figuring out how to turn the volume up and take rock to its scariest dimensions. While on the other side of the spectrum we had the cool, laid back sounds of California …

California has, at least since the 1950s, been associated with a melodic, moody, dreamy, and harmonic sound that no doubt comes from the Pacific Ocean itself. See jazz musicians: Chet Baker, Gerry Mulligan, and Dave Brubeck. See: the 60’s harmonies of The Beach Boys, The Byrds, The Turtles, and so many other southern California bands. California Cool, this was the sound of The Carpenters.

Although Richard and Karen Carpenter were born in New Haven, Connecticut (Richard in 1946, Karen in 1950) they moved to Downey, California in 1963 when The Beach Boys were at the top of their game and The Beatles were on their way over from England. Richard was already a child prodigy on the piano. Both kids could sing. Karen was learning the drums in school—and it didn’t take long for the brother/sister act to get signed [by Herb Alpert] and put out an album by 1969.

Pretty cool.

The American dream.

But despite the high musical talent of Richard Carpenter—it was the voice of his sister that got them that record deal and it was the voice of his sister that still blows so many people away.

I’m listening to their first album right now. I like having the complete first effort of anyone I really like in my collection. The first releases are often the most pure, before a band gets infected by Hollywood lights and the roar of the beast crowd.

Their first album was called: Offering, but later (and wisely) changed to: Ticket to Ride.

It’s an oddball recording. Even the CD version that I have is now out of print. The album sounds like a gifted brother and sister goofing around, but you can’t just say the album sounds goofy, because there’s too much obvious and technical talent to their musicianship and their voices. Richard and Karen’s voices blended together like peanut butter and jelly. A perfect match, vocally, but there is a critical passion missing—no doubt due to this being a family collaboration and not a husband and wife team. It would have been interesting to see what Karen could have done with other vocalists and musicians.

The stand out track is the song chosen to rename the album: “Ticket to Ride.” “Ticket to Ride” is of course a Lennon/McCartney Beatles song, originally released four years earlier on The Beatles’s Help! album. Despite the train-wreck of this week’s American Idol contestants turning Beatles songs into crap, Beatles music really does and always has translated well when great singers and bands take them on.

For me, “Ticket to Ride” is actually a fairly marginal Beatles song, almost a softball pitch for Lennon/McCartney, but Karen’s voice on The Carpenter’s version gives it something extra. The song comes alive with Karen’s melancholy tone, and while Carpenter’s harmony can in fact be “corny” when listened to in the wrong frame of mind—when it works, it works.

But it’s Karen’s voice in particular that has haunted me all these years, and that’s why I wanted to write this particular article. Voices, sounds, songs are like elements of a time machine. The right song can take you back in time with alarming clarity, and this frequently happens when I hear Karen sing.

If I hear “We’ve Only Just Begun,” “(They Long to Be) Close to You,” “Superstar,” or “Top of the World” on the radio it is almost impossible not to travel back to the early 70s when my I rode my yellow Huffy mountain bike everywhere I went, and when I slowed down long enough—reading comic books all the time; laughter, I’m smiling, and my mother is still alive.

Yeah, 1983 was a tough year. On February 4th we lost Karen Carpenter to heart failure brought on by anorexia nervosa. By spring we would lose Muddy Waters, slipping out of this world, dying in his sleep. I had deserted the United States Navy on an ill-fated surfing safari and by year’s end the amazing Dennis Wilson would drown in Marina Del Rey.

My mother didn’t make it to the 1980s. She died four years before Karen, when Richard was hospitalized to get off of Quaaludes and Karen was trying to work on a solo album. Essentially over for The Carpenters, but they had already left a legacy, and when I think of my mother in those days before the world became a much harsher, scarier, corporate place to live … I hear Karen’s voice haunting in the background and my mother’s soft laughter becomes something inside that music, a melody that can never die.

Bio:

Bradley Mason Hamlin was born and raised in Los Angeles, educated at the University of California at Davis, and currently lives in Sacramento with his beautiful wife and crazy children. His short stories, articles, and poems have appeared in several small press books, magazines, and literary journals in print and on line. Hamlin created Mystery Island Publications and writes the Secret Society series: Intoxicated Detective. For more information about Hamlin and other wild things—visit: www.mysteryisland.net