Carole King - Tapestry

Released - February 1971

Genre - Folk Rock

Producer - Lou Adler

Selected Personnel - Carole King (Vocals/Piano/Keyboards); Curtis Amy (Flute/Saxophone); Steve Barzyk (Drums); David Campbell (Cello/Viola); Danny Kortchmar (Guitar/Conga); Russ Kunkel (Drums); Charles Larkey (Bass); Joni Mitchell (Backing Vocals); James Taylor (Guitar)

Standout Track - It's Too Late

I came to this relatively recently, only earlier this year I think, which is strange considering its astounding popularity and its tangential links to a lot of the music that's already firmly lodged in my consciousness. It's an album that's achieved musical history thanks to being the longest-running charting album by a female solo artist, and Carole King's links to the West Coast folk scene populated by the likes of Joni Mitchell (who performs backing vocals on Tapestry) means I really ought to have become aware of her sooner than I did. Nonetheless, it was only earlier this year that Emily was showing me her latest vinyl acquisitions (Emily insists on listening to everything on vinyl, whereas I'm a semi-keen collector of records on vinyl purely as decorative objects because I don't own a record player). Among them was Tapestry, something I had only vaguely heard of before due to its legacy, but knew very little about. Only on her insistence that it was an album she connected with personally (the cover image of a woman sat at home with her cat and her soft furnishings struck a chord, I think) did I go away and learn more about King and listen to the record itself which, while hardly particularly innovative or adventurous, is one of the very best early examples of easy listening and fun, heartwarming pop music to come from the vaguely credible source of the singer-songwriter scene rather than from the bigger, more commercial pop machine record companies that were churning out pop music that was altogether more tedious and anodyne.

Carole King had been an important invisible presence on the music scene for many years by the time she finally achieved breakthrough success as an artist in her own right with Tapestry. She had started in the 50s by recording demos with none other than Paul Simon, who had been a schoolfriend in New York, before striking up a songwriting partnership with her husband Gerry Goffin. Throughout the 60s, Goffin and King would be the creative force behind some of the decade's biggest hits, most notably "Will You Love Me Tomorrow?" by the Shirelles in 1960 and "(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman" by Aretha Franklin in 1967. They also contributed a number of songs to Dusty Springfield's seminal Dusty In Memphis in 1969, but by the time that album was released their marriage and songwriting partnership had dissolved, and King had moved to Laurel Canyon in Los Angeles, where she struck up friendships with the local folk movement, with the likes of Joni Mitchell and James Taylor. (There's theories that King is one of the "Ladies of the Canyon" that Joni Mitchell sings about on the title track of her third album). Taylor encouraged her to perform more of her own material, and the result was the tepidly-received Writer in 1970. Undeterred by her debut album's lack of success or critical notice, she finessed the formula for Tapestry and soon ended up breaking records all over the world, some of which remain unbroken today.

As I said, Tapestry isn't the sort of album that will astound and amaze anybody well-versed in folk music of the early 70s. There's none of the astonishing personal insight or storytelling of Mitchell here, none of her unusual arrangements or vocal trills, nor is there any of the elegant, rootsy folk rock of Neil Young. This is essentially undemanding pop music, but filtered through the mind of somebody far more honest and sincere and talented than the minds that created most other commercial pop music throughout the 60s. What makes this album really fascinating, in fact, is its status as a sort of marriage between two quite disparate musical styles, standing on the brink of the transition from one to the other. King's songwriting is still very much in the vein of 1960s pop, with these songs being fairly simple (albeit catchy and beautiul) verse-chorus-verse constructions with undemanding lyrics of heartache and longing, a long way from the aforementioned complexity of the rest of the West Coast folk scene. But it's also very much in line with the folk movement in its simple, tasteful, stripped down acoustic arrangements. It's perhaps in this marriage of two different musical worlds that it succeeded in capturing a mass audience that her contemporaries in Laurel Canyon had largely failed to really grasp at this point. It's certainly a world away from the sound of the hits Goffin and King had crafted for the likes of the Shirelles, even though a couple of those early hits are dusted off and reinvented here. "Will You Love Me Tomorrow?" is given an earthy, honest makeover built around King's voice and piano and comes off far more emotionally affecting and profound than the original rendition, with its crowded and busy production and arrangements. "(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman," meanwhile, lacks the bombast and vocal power of Aretha Franklin's original, and is perhaps less able of grabbing you by the throat and demanding your attention, but King's softer, even weaker voice, renders it far more vulnerable and trembling than the original manages. The lack of technical prowess or power in King's voice, in fact, can be a huge virtue on some of these songs. It's never weak enough to be actively bad, but it's simplicity and plainness suits these simple, homespun tunes beautifully and was praised at the time of the album's release for opening up the singer-songwriter genre for artists who perhaps lacked the technical precision of some of their contemporaries, but more than made up for it with their compositions or sheer heart.

King is also one of the earliest successful American folk singer-songwriters to use the piano as their main instrument rather than guitar, and to build the music around it, in a similarly bold and unusual move to Elton John in the UK. The guitars of Danny Kortchmar and James Taylor are largely relegated to the background except for the occasional attention-grabbing lick as on the rollicking opening track "I Feel The Earth Move," or the insistent riff of the country-tinged rockabilly of "Smackwater Jack." But the majority of the standout tracks aren't the more upbeat pop songs but the tender ballads, most notably the heartfelt yearning of "So Far Away," or the album's big hit, the melancholy regret of "It's Too Late," a beautifully weary piece of resignation to the passing of time and to missed opportunities. King's voice, again, is unadorned, unrefined and simple and renders these songs in all their purity and beauty. It may not shock or surprise the keen music-lover, and in places it does sound more like a throwback to straightforward 1960s songwriting techniques rather than the musical advances that surrounded it, but it also contains some of the most affecting and downright memorable tunes of the era, and deserves its longstanding success. Of course, creating something that became such a worldwide global smash would go on to be an albatross around King's neck, and she was doomed to never again create anything that garnered the critical or commercial acclaim of this early work. But when you've created one of the great masterworks of easy listening, that's hardly something worth complaining about. I'm sure Carole King herself isn't too upset about it.

Track Listing:

All songs written by Carole King except where noted.

1. I Feel The Earth Move

2. So Far Away

3. It's Too Late (Lyrics by Toni Stern)

4. Home Again

5. Beautiful

6. Way Over Yonder

7. You've Got A Friend

8. Where You Lead

9. Will You Love Me Tomorrow? (Gerry Goffin & Carole King)

10. Smackwater Jack (Gerry Goffin & Carole King)

11. Tapestry

12. (You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman (Gerry Goffin; Carole King & Jerry Wexler)