3-LP boxed set from 1973

[Tony]

Does anyone here have or know anything about this limited edition 3-LP UK boxed set issued in 1973? In particular, I'm curious to know if the booklet contains a unique interview or material not found elsewhere.

http://eil.com/shop/moreinfo.asp?catalogid=302150

 

[Harry]

An odd tracklisting for a compilation:

1. (They Long To Be) Close To You
2. Jambalaya (On The Bayou)
3. Bless The Beasts & The Children
4. Saturday
5. Help
6. For All We Know
7. A Song For You
8. Sing
9. Let Me Be The One
10. Mr Guder
11. I'll Never Fall In Love Again
12. Goodbye To Love
13. Rainy Days And Mondays
14. Love Is Surrender
15. Heather (Instrumental)
16. Maybe It's You
17. Druscilla Penny
18. This Masquerade
19. Superstar
20. Flat Baroque
21. I Won't Last A Day Without You
22. I Kept On Loving You
23. Crystal Lullaby
24. I Can't Make Music
25. Yesterday Once More
26. Bacharach/David Medley: Knowing When To Leave/Make It Easy On Yourself/(There's) Always Something There To Remind Me/I'll Never Fall In Love Again/Walk On By/Do You Know The Way To San Jose
27. Baby It's You
28. Hurting Each Other
29. Reason To Believe
30. Sometimes
31. We've Only Just Begun
32. Top Of The World
33. One Love
34. It's Going To Take Some Time
35. Hideaway
36. Another Song

It contains songs from 4 of 5 albums released to that point, totally eliminating the first album, OFFERING/TICKET TO RIDE. It also has almost all of CLOSE TO YOU and the tan album.

Since it says "limited", I guess it was pretty limited!

Harry

 

[Mike Blakesley]

I have this set.

The booklet has a lot of pictures of Karen and Richard, and some family pics during their childhood, plus extreme closeups of their faces and some other (for the time) recent pics. All pictures are black and white.

There is also a one-page typical story-of-the-Carpenters essay (no author credit given), and a lengthy interview that I have not seen anywhere else, but I'm not a Carpenters completist either so it could have appeared elsewhere. The interview was conducted at the Au Petit Cafe in Hollywood, if that helps. It's interesting because it talks about the business of music, how hits are discovered by radio, how the producer picks the songs, etc. Both Karen and Richard took part in the interview.

The box is typical box-set cardboard, with the logo stamped in gold both on the box and on the booklet. The record labels are the A&M tan & silver type. There are no musician credits, but writer credits and track times are given, both on the individual sleeves (stamped in gold, just like on the cover) and on the inside cover of the box. The box cover is attached at the left, rather than just being a lift-off cover. The back of the box is all black, with small print along one side saying this collection consists of previously released material.

The picture shows the individual album sleeves being notched in the corners, making the set look like a cut-out or a promo item. Not true...my set is notched that way, too. I assume it was done in order to make it easy to lift the sleeves out of the box. The sleeves are much thicker paper than your typical inside sleeve -- nice slick paper, not cardboard.

The gold-colored page shown in the picture is just an insert that came wrapped under the shrinkwrap originally. It just gives a listing of some of the big hits on the package.

All in all, a nice -- if not very colorful -- set.

One unusual thing -- the version of "Close to You" on this set is the full, album length version complete with the false ending, which I don't think has appeared on any other collections. I don't know about any of the mixes that are used, etc. I haven't played this set in years.

Hope this info helps.

[edit: fix a couple of typos]

 

[Tony]

Thanks for the great info Mike. The interview you describe sounds vaguely familiar, but I could be mistaken. I've seen this collection only once in the last 30+ years, and I've never seen it discussed on message boards which is surprising since it is almost certainly the first "boxed set" of Carpenters material ever released. Being a limited edition collection, I wonder how many of these sets were produced? Any chance they were numbered?

 

[Mike Blakesley]

No, I looked all around the box and all the contents...no numbers.

 

[newvillefan]

The interview was conducted at the Au Petit Cafe in Hollywood, if that helps.

This is a restaurant that Richard and Karen loved, going frequently in breaks from recording sessions in the early days. Richard mentioned it by name in the 1993 BBC Radio 2 radio show 'The Karen Carpenter Story', saying it was a 'great little place'.

Richard's comments from this documentary, regarding Karen in 1974:

RC: She was dieting. It wasn't like she was losing this weight because we were working too hard... My God, we'd worked hard like that year after year! No, she was making a concerted effort to just have this or that, and to really watch what she was eating. The first time I remember giving me pause was at the 'Au Petit', which is this great little restaurant we used to eat at during breaks from recording. Karen had been seeing this guy, like an 'exercise-guru' person - and she was actually bulking up! I think she only wanted to tone and she started to bulk. Well that REALLY upset her.

You see, to do this whole thing in a nutshell: Karen was a chubby teenager - definitely. In 1967 she decided to lose some weight and went about it the proper way: she went to see the doctor who put her on a water diet, and she went from 140lbs down to about 120lbs. And there she stayed. If you look at her in '70, '71 and '72 she looked absolutely fine. But then you look at when we did the 'Hope Show' in the fall of '73 and you'll see she's starting to bulk up. And that's because of this guy and his training programme: evidently certain things she was supposed to eat started her off.

So now she was starting to come down again and I remember us sitting at the 'Au Petit'. She was around 115lbs and she looked great! Cos that's right where Karen should have been. So I said 'You look great!' And she replied, 'Well, I'm just going to get down to 105'. And I said '105?! But you look great right now!' But of course that was the beginning of the whole thing. It went way past 105 and all of this came together in Vegas, in what would have been the fall of '75: Karen was down to about 80lbs and actually had to lie down in-between shows. Of course NOTHING ever affected her voice, but the audience was gasping when she walked out because she was way, way too thin.

Here's the link to the transcription I did years ago (entirely from memory!!! How did I do that?!):

http://www.vex.net/~paulmac/carpenter/articles/bbc.html

Stephen

 

[SakuraSYayoi]

I have read that 3-LP was released in 1976 in the U.K., and 4-LP was released in 1973, U.K..
Was this 3-LP released in 1973? So were both 3-LP and 4-LP released in the U.K. in the same year?

Sakura

 

[Tony]

Sakura,

Leslie Pfenninger, on her site, lists the release date for Carpenters Collection as 1973 and the photo she uses is of the same set that I linked to above. That's really all I know. However, the one and only time I saw this edition was in late '76 or early '77. Was there a 4-LP collection as well? What was it called?

Tony

 

[SakuraSYayoi]

I think a Japanese site has
"Carpenters Collection" AMLX3802 as 4-LP 1973-release, jacket has colorful logo & picture (one at flip of "A Song For You").
"The Carpenters Collection" CARP1000 as 3-LP 1976-release, this set.

Decade book has;
England
"The Single 1974-78"
"Carpenters Collection"(3-Record Box Set)

I just searched for these sets, British site has;
"A Kind of Hush" 1976 - "The Carpenters Collection" 1976 - "Live at the Palladium" 1977

Some other sites;
"The Carpenters Collection" - CARP1000
"Carpenters Collection" - AMLX3802
(A couple of record sites have AML3802 in stock, but no pictures.
There was not release year.)

We may wait for collector or British member.

Sakura