Rock Flashback: Carole King

Carole King (L) and James Taylor (R) onstage in 2010 (Getty Images/Gail Oskin for ticketsforcharity.com)

Singer/songwriter Carole King turns 70 today. She scored a string of hit albums and singles throughout the 1970s. But if she’d never sung a note, she would still deserve a significant place in music history.

Before she began her career as a singer, Carole King was a prolific songwriter. She and her partner/husband Gerry Goffin, working out of the Brill Building song factory in New York City, wrote a number of songs you probably know: “Will You Love Me Tomorrow,” “The Locomotion,” “One Fine Day,” “Up on the Roof,” “(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman,” and “Pleasant Valley Sunday,” to name only a few.

It’s not that King wasn’t trying to become a singer in the early ’60s, only that her records were bombing — although “It Might As Well Rain Until September” made #22 and “He’s a Bad Boy” sneaked onto the Hot 100. After she and Goffin divorced, she moved to the West Coast, where new friend James Taylor encouraged her to restart her solo career. The 1970 album Writer sank without a trace, although King’s fans rediscovered it after her second album, Tapestry, did 15 weeks  at #1 in the summer of 1971, and 302 weeks on the Billboard album chart all told.

Tapestry is the distilled essence of 1971, from the unaffected, barefoot photo of King on the cover to the intimate, confessional songs inside. King isn’t a particularly great singer — she sounds better on later albums — but it takes a lot of listening before you notice that. Five more top 10 albums followed Tapestry between 1972 and 1976.

King released a Christmas album last year, her first studio record in 10 years. She’s released a couple of live albums in that span, and toured with Taylor. We can’t imagine this is going to stay up very long, but here’s an hour of the two of them performing at the Troubadour in Los Angeles in 2010.

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