Karen Carpenter

Karen Anne Carpenter (March 2, 1950 – February 4, 1983) was an American singer and drummer who formed half of the highly successful duo the Carpenters with her older brother Richard.

With a distinctive three-Octave contralto range, she was praised by her peers for her vocal skills.

Karen Anne Carpenter was born on March 2, 1950, at Grace New Haven Hospital (now called Yale New Haven Hospital) in New Haven, Connecticut, the daughter of Agnes Reuwer (March 5, 1915 – November 10, 1996) and Harold Bertram Carpenter (November 8, 1908 – October 15, 1988).

Harold was born in Wuzhou, China, where his parents were missionaries.

Before finding work in the printing business, he was educated at boarding schools in the United Kingdom.

Carpenter's only sibling, Richard, the elder by three years, developed an interest in music at an early age, becoming a piano prodigy.

Karen's first words were "bye-bye" and "stop it", the latter spoken in response to Richard.

She enjoyed dancing and by age four was enrolled in tap dancing and ballet classes; later on, she liked to play softball in the street.

Carpenter was born in New Haven, Connecticut, and moved to Downey, California in 1963 with her family.

She began to study the drums in high school and joined the Long Beach State choir after graduating.

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

Carpenter entered Downey High School in 1964 at age 14 and was a year younger than her classmates.

She joined the school marching band, initially to avoid exercising for gym classes.

Bruce Gifford, the conductor (who had previously taught her brother), gave her the glockenspiel, an instrument she disliked, and after admiring the performance of her friend and classmate, drummer Frankie Chavez (who had been playing from an early age and idolized jazz drummer Buddy Rich), she asked if she could play those instead.

Carpenter wanted a Ludwig drum set because it was used by her favorite drummers, Joe Morello and Ringo Starr.

Chavez persuaded her family to buy her a $300 (the equivalent of $ in ) Ludwig kit, and he began to show her how to play.

Her enthusiasm for drumming led to teaching herself how to play complicated lines and studying stick control, drum styles, playing technique, and grips like traditional and matched grip.

She was talented, rehearsed every day and within a year, she could play in complex time signatures, such as the Quintuple meter in Dave Brubeck's "Take Five".

Carpenter began to study drum technique with Bill Douglass, a well-respected jazz drummer with Benny Goodman and Art Tatum, and soon after she acquired a professional drum kit.

Carpenter was initially nervous about performing in public, but said she "was too involved in the music to worry about it".

In 1965, Karen, Richard, and his college friend Wes Jacobs, a bassist and tuba player, formed the Dick Carpenter Trio.

The band rehearsed daily and played jazz in nightclubs.

Richard later told he was impressed with his sister's musical talent, saying that she would "speedily maneuver the sticks as if she had been born in a drum factory".

She did not sing at this point; instead, singer Margaret Shanor guested on some numbers.

The trio signed a contract with RCA Records and recorded two instrumentals, but they were not released.

She graduated from Downey High School in the spring of 1967, receiving the John Philip Sousa Band Award, and enrolled as a music major at Long Beach State, where she performed in the college choir with Richard.

Karen subsequently became more confident in singing and began to take lessons with Frank Pooler, the choir's director.

She worked with him on developing the upper register so she would have a full three-Octave range and he taught her a mixture of classical and pop singing.

Pooler later said "Karen was a born pop singer".

By age 17, her voice "was a remarkable instrument".

The first public performance of Karen and Richard was in a local production of Frank Loesser's musical Guys and Dolls.

Carpenter's first band was Two Plus Two, an all-girl trio formed with friends from Downey High.

They split up after one of the mothers refused to give her daughter permission to attend their first gig.

After several years of touring and recording, the Carpenters were signed to A&M Records in 1969, achieving enormous commercial and critical success throughout the 1970s.

Initially, Carpenter was the band's full-time drummer, but she gradually took the role of frontwoman as her drumming was reduced to a handful of live showcases or tracks on albums.

In 1975, she started exhibiting symptoms of anorexia nervosa due to the massive pressures of fame and her complicated family dynamics.

She was plagued by the disease for years.

She died in 1983 at the age of 32 of heart failure due to complications from anorexia, which was little-known outside celebrity circles at the time, and her death triggered widespread attention and research into eating disorders and body dysmorphia.

Interest in her life and death has spawned numerous documentaries and movies.

Carpenter's work continues to attract praise, including appearing on Rolling Stone's 2010 list of the 100 greatest singers of all time.