Step back in time and re-read Billboard Magazine:
Album Recalls Karen Carpenter, By PAUL GREIN, November 19,1983.
"LOS ANGELES -There's a story behind every album on Billboard's Top 200, but none is more
poignant than that behind the album that debuts at number 84 this week -the Carpenters'
"Voice Of The Heart." The album, which has been in the top 10 in Britain for the past month,
comes nine months after Karen Carpenter's death, at 32, from complications associated with
anorexia nervosa. Karen died on February 4, and by the end of that month Richard Carpenter was back
at A & M Studios finishing work on the album. While one would think it would be hard to focus on work at a time
of such shock and grief, Carpenter says returning to that familiar regimen actually helped pull him
through. "It actually made the time a little bit easier," he says. "I think if I'd just stayed home, it would
have been that much more difficult. "I felt strongly that the material shouldn't be stuck away on a shelf.
Putting myself in a fan's position - if I'd never met Karen -I'd want to hear it. I hear now there's more unreleased
John Lennon on its way, and I want to hear it. I feel it deserves to be heard." Carpenter completed work on
the album in May, but its release was held up for five months by A & M chairman Jerry Moss and the
Carpenters' personal manager, Jerry Weintraub. The most likely reason is that A &M didn't want to appear
to be capitalizing on Karen's death by releasing an album of mostly sad, sentimental ballads so
soon afterwards. For the past month, Carpenter has been on a promotional tour of England, Japan and Australia.
He has also done selected press and television interviews in the U.S., including "Good Morning America"
and People magazine. But Carpenter and his parents called off a scheduled interview for ABC -TV's
"20/20." "We felt it was going to be a little too painful," he says. "In early research, calling different people,
they were getting into really painful subjects, and who needs it? I don't want Karen remembered that way.
Karen brought a great deal of joy to many milllions of people, and that's how she should be remembered."
Carpenter says time had been booked for the Carpenters to begin recording a new album on Feb. 11
of this year. It would have been the first time the duo was in the studio since April 1982, when they cut
four sides. "We were making plans and figuring that Karen was going to get her strength back and we'd be
ready to go back in. That's where that was left." "Voice Of The Heart" includes two songs from the April 1982
sessions ( "Now" and "You're Enough "), and other cuts dating as far back as 1976 ( "Ordinary Fool ") and
1977 ( "Sailin' On The Tide "). But Carpenter says there's still enough releasable material left over for a
second studio album. "I'd love to do another one," he says, "but, obviously that's up to A & M.
I don't know if its release is predicated on the success of this album, or if, to them, this is it.
But there are plenty of other things (in the can). It was killing me not to put them on this album,
but I was hoping there would be another."
and,
CARPENTERS -Voice Of The Heart, A&M SP4954. Produced by Richard Carpenter.
This is a collection of previously unreleased studio tracks cut between 1976 and April, 1982,
10 months before Karen Carpenter's death.
It's the duo's strongest album in a decade and contains a few cuts that rank with their all -time best.
The most radio worthy are "Two Lives," a rock -edged ballad previously recorded by Bonnie Raitt;
"Your Baby Doesn't Love You Anymore," a brooding, slow -boil pop piece in the tradition of "Hurt So Bad,"
and "Make Believe It's Your First Time," the soft reflective ballad which is the first single.
But the most gripping cut is "Ordinary Fool," a Paul Williams ballad which features the
bluesiest vocal of Karen's career."
