{"id":1935,"date":"2024-12-21T15:44:00","date_gmt":"2024-12-21T15:44:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dev.nysmusic.com\/2024\/2024\/12\/21\/carole-king-new-york-a-career-retrospective\/"},"modified":"2024-12-21T15:44:00","modified_gmt":"2024-12-21T15:44:00","slug":"carole-king-new-york-a-career-retrospective","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dev.nysmusic.com\/2024\/2024\/12\/21\/carole-king-new-york-a-career-retrospective\/","title":{"rendered":"Carole King & New York: A Career Retrospective"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A walking music legend, Carole King\u2019s roots in New York run deep. Born and raised in Brooklyn, a graduate of Queens College, and lifetime lover of the Manhattan music scene as both an artist and an audience member, New York is an integral part of King\u2019s work and identity at large.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Carole
Photo: Jim McCrary, via caroleking.com<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Born Carol Joan Klein to Russian and Polish immigrant parents, Carole arrived in the world not too soon after her mother and father had arrived in Brooklyn via Ellis Island. With her father, a radio announcer turned New York City firefighter, and mother, a secretary at a local high school, Carole\u2019s life has been positively steeped in musicality from day one – as well as a deeply ingrained identity as a New York native and lifelong Brooklyn Dodgers fan since youth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Famously meeting while in an elevator at Brooklyn College, Carole\u2019s father set the precedent for a Klein behind the microphone with his gig as a radio announcer, and her mother\u2019s studies in and passion for english and drama lent themselves to a rather creative upbringing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Upon her parents\u2019 separation, Carole sought attention and found the answer in the theater. First being introduced to the glittering world of Broadway at just five years old, Carole fell utterly in love, absorbing all of the media and musical projects her mother put on. Her home was rarely quiet, being constantly introduced to shades of music varying from show tunes to Brahms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Carole
Photo via caroleking.com<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Finding a unique outlet for emotions of all ranges, King leaned into the theatrics of the stage as she grew up, eventually auditioning for the High School of Performing Arts – now referred to as the Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of the same name. While the audition was not a success, it marked a turning point for Carole as the arts became something of possible professional pursuit more concretely in her mind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As any teenager of the mid 1950s did, Carole often tuned in to her favorite radio stations. However, unlike many other of her rather sheltered white peers, Carole\u2019s station of preference was Alan Freed\u2019s<\/a> nightly WINS program. Freed was a lover of artists like the Penguins, the Moonglows, the Clovers, Danny Overbea, La Vern Baker, and BB King – a notably African-American lineup that had many white parents positively beside themselves. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In addition, many tracks played on Freed\u2019s station fell under the umbrellas of rock and roll and R&B, both equally scandalous for their promiscuity and narratives on adversity that were up until then rather absent in the public eye\u2019s musical circuit. This scandal was all the better for an adolescent King, however, who found the new wave of music and its consequent conscious style of creation absolutely mesmerizing<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Carole has never been one to shy away from advocating for her beliefs. After moving to Idaho in 1977, she became deeply entrenched in the local ecosystem\u2019s wellbeing and has been an outspoken voice for environmental change ever since. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

King would go on to participate in her local Women\u2019s March in 2017<\/a>, holding a sign that read \u201cOne Small Voice.\u201d A single titled with the same phrase would be released the next month, utilizing a thinly-veiled emperor\u2019s new clothes metaphor that encourages listeners to \u201cspeak out in honesty.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While many artists\u2019 relationships with New York City begin on the stage, King\u2019s began in the audience. As a young adult who positively adored the cutting-edge music she was hearing over the radio, being able to attend Freed\u2019s Easter Jubilee at the Brooklyn Paramount<\/a> in 1955 meant the absolute world and sparked a major bout of motivation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cMoving farther in, we saw Mickey Baker talking to a couple of the Penguins. At that moment I knew I wanted to mean something to these people. I didn\u2019t want to be one of them. I just wanted them to know who I was and consider me worthy of respect. That ambition existed concurrently and in no way conflicted with my ambition to be an actress.\u201d<\/p>\n– Carole King, A Natural Woman<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Auditioning for the High School of Performing Arts once more re-inspired, King enrolled in the fall of 1955 and spent a year studying drama and dance alongside fellow students Al Pacino and Rafael Campos. She would depart the school after a year and return to her classmates at James Madison High School, but Carole would take with her the lessons taught by teachers like Mr. Sachs who inadvertently set her up to arrange vocals through his assignments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Like many teenagers of the area, King perpetually sought out the liberal arts for peer acceptance and self-expression, the heart of an increasingly viable, ever-vibrant scene only a few subway stops away. 1957 marked a time of escapades up and down Bleecker Street and throughout the coffee shops and venues of Greenwich Village with her peers. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

After a rare successful infiltration of the Vanguard, Carole King witnessed mind-blowing jazz sets and sat listening to the music while her peers smoked. By default she became the one picking out the records, and that quickly became much more interesting to Carole than the smoking.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After a nudge in the direction of her high school\u2019s annual Sing by her mother, King wrote, arranged, and performed a piece for the first time to a large audience, and the response of her peers in the audience shifted something within her. She soon began to compose in earnest, arranging pieces for the chorus class before turning the passion into a full-on street corner harmony gig. Recruiting three other peers to be the soprano, tenor, and bass to her alto, the group dubbed themselves the Cosines and performed for free at school events and dances. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Carole
Photo via caroleking.com<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

This would mark the beginning of a career in arranging both for a group and for herself, developing a process she would keep well into her career as she wrote for or in collaboration with the likes of Bobby Vee, The Everly Brothers, The Monkees, Aretha Franklin, James Taylor<\/a>, Mariah Carey, and countless others across the industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After deciding to pursue songwriting in earnest, Carole chased down a so-called \u201cAtlantic Records\u201d that Freed had mentioned on his radio station, quickly presenting her work to an executive and landing her first recording contract.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Graduating high school at just sixteen years old, King entered Queens College with little enthusiasm after an unexpected move to Rosedale had uprooted her plans to attend her parents\u2019 alma mater. Just around the corner, however, were fellow freshmen and musical peers Art Garfunkel and Paul Simon, the latter becoming a quick friend and collaborator.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Also at Queens College was Carole King\u2019s future songwriting partner and husband of many years Gerry Goffin. While she first thought they\u2019d never see eye to eye on music – he was very open with his hatred for Rock and Roll – his pitch to collaborate on a song quickly became history. Married at her parents\u2019 home in Rosedale in 1959, Carole and Gerry moved into a one-bedroom apartment on Bedford Avenue, only a block away from her childhood home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Carole
Photo via caroleking.com<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Gerry, a chemist in downtown Brooklyn, and Carole, a secretary for a chimney manufacturer in Manhattan, were determined to see their passion for songwriting through and, upon an interaction with Neil Sedaka on the sidewalk of Broadway, the two landed a three-year writing deal that brought the couple out of debt and into a two-bedroom apartment on Brown Street in Brooklyn, an area that had been nothing but corn fields when King was a child.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Working in the highly competitive cubicle space that was Aldon, Gerry and Carole managed their first major hit with \u201cWill You Love Me Tomorrow.\u201d Gerry stepped away from his traditional job and the couple moved into the suburbs of West Orange, New Jersey to raise their second daughter, which is where they would reside together for a number of years before the marriage began to crumble. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

When Goffin decided to move to California on his own, King was torn between the vibrancy of what she dubbed \u201cthe coolest place she knew\u201d and California, where their children would be able to see their father. Ultimately putting her children before herself, Carole switched Coasts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Photo via caroleking.com<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

1970 marked a second beginning for King, who would be brought back to New York and into the spotlight by friend and collaborator James Taylor during his tour. Just prior to their show at Carole\u2019s alma mater Queens College, Taylor requested she sing the lead for “Up on the Roof” to King\u2019s immediate horror and dismay. Terrified about stepping out of the comfortable zone that was just “James\u2019 pianist,” Carole took a breath and performed, receiving raucous applause.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Up on the Roof” would return in 1971 at King\u2019s first ever performance as a solo act in front of an audience during the now famed June evening at Carnegie Hall<\/a>. Recorded and later immortalized in a seventeen-track album<\/a>, the concert featured some of Carole\u2019s first works alongside duets with Taylor for \u201cUp on the Roof\u201d,\u00a0 \u201cWill You Love Me Tomorrow?\u201d, and \u201cYou\u2019ve Got a Friend.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With the turn of the new year came Carole\u2019s 30th birthday, a whopping four GRAMMY wins for her work in Tapestry<\/em>, and the arrival of her fourth child. The following year, King returned to New York City to deliver a first-of-its-kind Central Park show completely free to the public, a rather poetic homecoming of an estimated 100,000+ attendees.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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