Karen Carpenter

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  Karen Carpenter was pronounced dead at 9:51 on the morning of the 4th of February 1983, at the age of 32. Paramedics had found her unconscious and in cardiac arrest, her heart beating about once every ten seconds.

  She had spent the 1970s as half of the Carpenters, a duo she formed with her elder brother Richard. Together they sold records on a scale few acts ever reach.

  How did a teenager who wanted to be a drummer become one of the most admired voices in popular music? Why did the person in the spotlight keep reaching for the drum kit behind her? And why did the death of one singer change how the public talked about an illness that few people discussed openly at the time?

  1292559

• 2. Drummer First

  ›

  Karen Anne Carpenter was born on the 2nd of March 1950 in New Haven, Connecticut. Her first words were "bye-bye" and "stop it", and the second was aimed at Richard, who showed a gift for piano at an early age. By four she was enrolled in tap dancing and ballet classes.

  In June 1963 the family moved to Downey, a suburb of Los Angeles, after her father Harold was offered a job there by a former business associate.

  At Downey High School in 1964, Karen was 14 and a year younger than her classmates. She joined the marching band, partly to get out of exercising in gym class. The conductor, Bruce Gifford, handed her a glockenspiel, an instrument she disliked.

  Her classmate Frankie Chavez changed that. He had been drumming since early childhood and idolized the jazz drummer Buddy Rich. After watching him play, Karen asked whether she could switch to drums.

  She wanted a Ludwig kit, because her favorite drummers Joe Morello and Ringo Starr played one. Chavez persuaded her family to buy a Ludwig set for $300, and he began teaching her the basics.

  Karen practiced every day and taught herself intricate patterns. She studied stick control, different drum styles, and grips such as traditional and matched. Within a year she could handle complex time signatures, like the one in Dave Brubeck's "Take Five".

  She later took lessons from Bill Douglass, a respected jazz drummer who had worked with Benny Goodman and Art Tatum. Soon afterward she acquired a professional drum kit.

  Public performance made her nervous at first, yet she said she "was too involved in the music to worry about it". In the spring of 1967 she graduated from Downey High School and received the John Philip Sousa Band Award.

  59359

• 3. Finding A Voice

  ›

  Karen's first band was Two Plus Two, an all-girl trio of friends from Downey High. It broke up before its first gig, when one of the mothers refused to let her daughter attend.

  In 1965 Karen and Richard teamed up with his college friend Wes Jacobs, a bassist and tuba player, to form the Dick Carpenter Trio. They rehearsed daily and played jazz in nightclubs. Karen did not sing yet, and a guest vocalist named Margaret Shanor handled some numbers. The trio signed with RCA Records and recorded two instrumentals, but neither was released.

  In April 1966 the Carpenters were invited to audition at a session with Joe Osborn, a bassist from the studio-musician collective known as the Wrecking Crew. Karen was expected only to play drums. She tried singing instead and impressed everyone in the room.

  Osborn offered her a recording contract on his own label, Magic Lamp Records. He showed little interest in Richard's involvement.

  When Jacobs left in 1967 to study at the Juilliard School, the siblings went looking for a new sound. With Gary Sims and John Bettis, they formed a group called Spectrum, which focused on lush vocal harmony. They recorded many demo tapes in Osborn's garage studio and worked out how to overdub voices onto multitrack tape.

  Record companies rejected many of those tapes. Live audiences were just as hard to win, because Spectrum sounded nothing like the hard rock and psychedelic rock then popular in clubs.

  Meanwhile, at Long Beach State, Karen enrolled as a music major and sang in the college choir with Richard. The choir director, Frank Pooler, gave her lessons. He helped her develop her upper register until she had a full three-octave range, and he taught her a blend of classical and pop technique.

  Pooler later said "Karen was a born pop singer". By seventeen, her voice was described as "a remarkable instrument".

  In 1968 the Dick Carpenter Trio appeared on the TV talent show Your All American College Show. Karen drummed and sang "Dancing in the Street", and the trio won the finals that year.

  5975660

• 4. Stepping Out Front

  ›

  A&M Records signed the Carpenters in 1969, when Karen was 19. At first she was both drummer and co-lead singer, and she sang every vocal from behind the drum set.

  The debut album, Offering, was later retitled Ticket to Ride. Richard wrote ten of its thirteen songs and sang on five. The opening and closing tracks were sung by both siblings in unison. Karen also played bass guitar on two songs, "All of My Life" and "Eve", with Osborn guiding her.

  Her drumming left marks on the record. "All I Can Do" is in 5/4 time, and "Your Wonderful Parade" layers multiple snare and bass drum overdubs to imitate a marching band.

  The Beatles song "Ticket to Ride" became the first single and reached No. 54 on the Billboard Hot 100. The next album, 1970's Close to You, produced two hits. "(They Long to Be) Close to You" went to No. 1, and "We've Only Just Begun" reached No. 2.

  At just 5 ft 4 in, Karen was hard to see from the seats behind her drum kit. Reviews complained that the live show lacked a focal point. Richard and their manager Sherwin Bash persuaded her to stand at the microphone for the hits while another musician played drums.

  That musician was often Cubby O'Brien, a former Disney Mouseketeer who served as the band's second drummer for many years. Karen struggled at first with solo singing on stage, because she felt safer behind the kit.

  After Now & Then came out in 1973, her albums gave her more singing and less drumming. Bash said "she was the one that people watched". From the 1976 tour onward she performed a drum showcase, moving around the stage and playing different configurations of drums.

  In the studio, close miking caught the subtleties of her voice. Many hits featured her lower contralto, and she joked, "The money's in the basement."

  She preferred Ludwig drums, and she especially loved her Ludwig SuperSensitive snare. Even so, she did not drum on every Carpenters recording. Hal Blaine, the session drummer, said she played on many album cuts, while he played on most studio sessions when she did not.

  Karen knew about Blaine's role and approved, since she and Richard wanted hit singles. Recording was also easier this way, because her guide vocal could be captured without spilling into the drum microphones. Blaine praised her drumming but believed her greatest strength was singing.

  She was the only featured drummer on Ticket to Ride and Now & Then, apart from "Jambalaya". On Made in America she shared the work, adding percussion beside Paulinho da Costa on "Those Good Old Dreams" and drumming alongside Larrie Londin on "When It's Gone (It's Just Gone)". She still called herself a "drummer who sang".

  5935105455

• 5. The Shelved Album

  ›

  Only 500 copies were pressed of Karen's first solo record, "Looking for Love" backed with "I'll Be Yours", released in 1967 on Osborn's Magic Lamp label. The label folded shortly afterward.

  A second solo attempt came in the late 1970s. In the middle of that decade, Richard developed an addiction to Quaaludes. The Carpenters canceled tour dates often, and they stopped touring altogether after their concert at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas on the 4th of September 1978.

  In 1979 Richard took a year off to treat his addiction. Karen used the time to record in New York with the producer Phil Ramone. The sessions sounded unlike usual Carpenters material, with disco and up-tempo numbers, more mature lyrics, and songs that showed off her upper register.

  The response in early 1980 was tepid, both from Richard and from A&M executives. Herb Alpert, a co-owner of A&M Records, shelved the album. The producer Quincy Jones tried to change his mind with a remix, but Alpert held firm.

  A&M charged Karen $400,000 for the cost of recording the unreleased album, to be paid from the duo's future royalties.

  Part of the record finally reached listeners in 1989, when some tracks, with Richard's remixes, appeared on Lovelines. That was the last Carpenters album of previously unreleased material. In 1996 the full solo album came out as originally intended, under the title Karen Carpenter.

  Rob Hoerburger wrote in The New York Times that it may not have defined her career, "but it holds up with anything that like-minded singers , Streisand, Newton-John , were recording at the time".

  591546317

• 6. Private Life

  ›

  The doorbell at Karen's apartment in Century City chimed the opening notes of "We've Only Just Begun". In 1976 she bought two apartments there and combined them into one. She also collected Disney memorabilia.

  Her relationship with her parents was complicated. Harold Carpenter had been born in Wuzhou, China, to missionary parents, and he was educated at boarding schools in the United Kingdom before working in printing. His wife was Agnes Reuwer. The family had moved to Los Angeles so that Richard could enter the music business, and they did not realize Karen's talent. She lived with them until 1974.

  Baseball was a lifelong love. As a child she played in the street, and the other children picked her before her brother. She studied baseball statistics closely and became a New York Yankees fan. In the early 1970s she pitched for a celebrity all-star softball team.

  Her friends included Petula Clark, Olivia Newton-John, and Dionne Warwick. She succeeded as a woman in a mostly male field, yet her views did not match the women's liberation movement. She said she felt a wife should cook for her husband, and she planned to do so when she married.

  In early interviews she showed no interest in dating. "As long as we're on the road most of the time, I will never marry," she said. By 1976 she was saying the music business made meeting people hard, and she refused to wed just for the sake of it. She later admitted to Newton-John that she longed for a happy marriage and a family. Her dates included Mike Curb, Tony Danza, Mark Harmon, and Steve Martin.

  On the 31st of August 1980, after a whirlwind romance, she married the real-estate developer Thomas James Burris in the Crystal Room of The Beverly Hills Hotel. He was divorced, had an 18-year-old son, and was nine years older than she was. Days earlier she had been taped singing a new song, "Because We Are in Love", written by Richard and John Bettis. The recording was played for the guests during the ceremony.

  The couple settled in Newport Beach, but the marriage soon failed. Karen wanted children, while Burris had undergone a vasectomy and refused to reverse it. Her friend Karen Kamon called the marriage "the straw that broke the camel's back" and said it was "absolutely the worst thing that could have ever happened to her".

  In September 1981 Karen revised her will. She left the marital home and its contents to Burris and everything else to her brother and parents, a fortune estimated at between $5 million and $10 million. Two months later, after an argument following a family dinner at a restaurant, she and Burris parted. She filed for divorce on the 28th of October 1982 while a patient at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York.

  5922192060

• 7. Illness And Final Days

  ›

  Karen began dieting in high school. Under a doctor's guidance she followed the Stillman diet, which centered on lean foods and plenty of water. She dropped to 120 lb and stayed near that weight until about 1973, when the Carpenters reached their peak.

  That year a concert photograph made her feel her clothes made her look heavy. A personal trainer changed her diet, but the new routine built muscle and made her feel heavier. She fired him and began her own program of exercise equipment and calorie counting. She lost about 20 lb. Her eating habits shifted too, and she would try to clear her plate by offering tastes to her dining companions.

  By September 1975 she weighed 91 lb. Audiences gasped at her thin appearance, and many fans wrote to ask what was wrong. She never declared an eating disorder in public. When asked point blank on the BBC program Nationwide in 1981, she said only that she was "pooped".

  Warwick recalled lunch with her in New York in 1981: "It was shocking to see how very thin she was." That year Karen told Richard she needed help. She spoke with Cherry Boone, who had recovered from anorexia, and contacted Boone's doctor. He warned that treatment could last from one to three years.

  Because she had performing and recording obligations, Karen instead chose the psychotherapist Steven Levenkron in New York City. Despite his treatment, her condition worsened, and she reached an all-time low of 77 lb. She told Levenkron she felt dizzy and that her heart was beating irregularly.

  In September 1982 she was admitted to Lenox Hill Hospital and given intravenous nutrition. She gained 30 lb in a fairly short time, but this strained a heart already weakened by years of anorexia. Her weight then stayed fairly stable for the rest of her life.

  "Now" was the last song she recorded, in April 1982. Richard worried about her health, yet thought her voice sounded as good as ever.

  In November 1982 she returned to California, determined to restart her career, finalize her divorce, and begin a new album with Richard. On the 17th of December 1982 she sang Christmas carols for her godchildren, their classmates, and friends at the Buckley School in Sherman Oaks. It was her last time performing.

  Her final public appearance came on the 11th of January 1983, at a gathering of past Grammy winners marking the awards' 25th anniversary. She looked frail and tired, yet Warwick found her lively and outgoing. Karen had begun writing songs for the first time, and she told Warwick she had "a lot of living left to do".

  On the 1st of February 1983 she saw Richard for the last time, and they discussed new plans for the group, including touring. Three days later she was due to sign her divorce papers. Shortly after waking, she collapsed on the floor of a walk-in closet at her parents' home in Downey.

  An ambulance took her to Downey Community Hospital. Her funeral was held on the 8th of February 1983 at Downey United Methodist Church. About 1,000 mourners attended, among them Warwick, Dorothy Hamill, Newton-John, and Clark. Burris placed his wedding ring in her casket.

  She was buried at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Cypress, California. In 2003 her remains and those of her parents were moved to a private mausoleum at Pierce Brothers Valley Oaks Memorial Park in Westlake Village.

  An autopsy released on the 11th of March 1983 ruled out a drug overdose. It attributed her death to "emetine cardiotoxicity due to or as a consequence of anorexia nervosa". Two years later the coroner told colleagues that repeated use of ipecac syrup had caused the heart failure. Levenkron disputed the claim, saying he had never known her to use ipecac and had seen no evidence that she had been vomiting.

  2627293133

• 8. Legacy

  ›

  After Karen's death, the songwriter Burt Bacharach said she "had a sound in her voice that was very unique, that I haven't heard before". Paul McCartney called hers "the best female voice in the world: melodic, tuneful and distinctive". Elton John described her as "one of the greatest voices of our lifetime".

  According to her friend Nicky Chinn, speaking in the BBC documentary Only Yesterday: The Carpenters Story, John Lennon once walked up to her in a Los Angeles restaurant. He told her, "I want to tell you, love, that you've got a fabulous voice."

  Her singing influenced a long list of artists, including Madonna, Sheryl Crow, Shania Twain, Taylor Swift, Adele, Lady Gaga, Alicia Keys, and Sabrina Carpenter. Her drumming drew praise from Blaine, O'Brien, Buddy Rich, and Modern Drummer magazine. Playboy readers placed her in the drummer rankings of every annual music poll from 1974 to 1980, and they voted her tenth best drummer in 1975.

  On the 12th of October 1983, eight months after she died, the Carpenters received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. VH1 ranked her No. 29 on its 1999 list of the 100 Greatest Women of Rock and Roll. In 2010 Rolling Stone placed her at No. 94 among the 100 greatest singers of all time, calling her voice "impossibly lush and almost shockingly intimate".

  Her death brought wide media attention to anorexia nervosa, a condition that had not been widely known beforehand. Her family started the Karen A. Carpenter Memorial Foundation, which raised money for research on anorexia nervosa and other eating disorders.

  Some fans knew her as "Lead Sister". The name began in 1974, when a Japanese journalist mispronounced "lead singer". She later wore a T-shirt with the nickname at live shows.

  In 1994 the Richard and Karen Carpenter Performing Arts Center opened beside the music department at California State University, Long Beach, where both siblings had studied. Modeled on the New York State Theater at Lincoln Center, it seats more than 1,000 people.

  The film Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story, directed by Todd Haynes, arrived in 1987. It ran 43 minutes and used Barbie dolls as its characters. It was withdrawn in 1990 after Haynes lost a copyright lawsuit brought by Richard. It has since become a cult film, and Entertainment Weekly put it on a 2003 list of the top 50 cult movies.

  The made-for-TV movie The Karen Carpenter Story aired on CBS on the 1st of January 1989, with Cynthia Gibb in the lead role. Gibb lip-synched to Karen's recordings, except on "The End of the World". The movie helped revive the Carpenters' critical standing and boosted interest in their music.

  Richard helped produce the documentaries Close to You: Remembering The Carpenters in 1997 and Only Yesterday in 2007. Randy Schmidt's 2010 biography Little Girl Blue drew on interviews with friends and associates, and The New York Times called it "one of the saddest tales in pop". In 2021, Chris May and Mike Cidoni Lennox published Carpenters: The Musical Legacy, based on interviews with Richard. A 2023 documentary from AMS Pictures, Karen Carpenter: Starving for Perfection, continues the retelling.

  230444849