🎧 Podcast CARPENTERS: Q&A, Ep. 5: "Christmas Portrait" (Special Edition)

[Murray]

In modern times, the word "Christendom" is only used by theologians and historians (and even then, rarely), and as Karen was neither, I'm willing to give her a pass. She might never have encountered the word before she stepped into the recording booth, and took her best shot at its pronunciation. Or, she could have changed the pronunciation intentionally for effect. Or, there's even a remote possibility that the word was misspelled on the lead sheet she was handed. We'll probably never know the answer. At any rate, I'm not loosing any sleep over it!

 

[Chris May]

It's so funny, because I always knew that word was not sung accurately, but never really thought much about it until now. Karen oftentimes took creative license in the way she sang certain words on their records, so I figured this was another one of those instances.

 

[A&M Retro]

Also, for those of you who are enjoying these, do you prefer a song-by-song format like I did with the Hush album, or something a little more organic, where I take a handful of questions and answer them, followed by a more generalized thematic breakdown?

We love both!!!! : )

 

[Matthew S]

Also, for those of you who are enjoying these, do you prefer a song-by-song format like I did with the Hush album, or something a little more organic, where I take a handful of questions and answer them, followed by a more generalized thematic breakdown?

Q&A and general breakdown

 

[JohnFB]

In modern times, the word "Christendom" is only used by theologians and historians (and even then, rarely)... Or, there's even a remote possibility that the word was misspelled on the lead sheet she was handed. We'll probably never know the answer. At any rate, I'm not loosing any sleep over it!

To deliberately belabor this discussion - and even though I have no source of authority for this - I contend, as @Murray suggests, there was a misspelling, but it was somewhere way back in the annals of history, and the misspelled word was NOT Christendom (changed to Christiandom) but the exact opposite. Instead, Christiandom was the original spelling and somewhere along the line it was changed to Christendom (deliberately or inadvertently). The word refers to the whole of the Christian World and its history, theology, etc. So, given the word Christian the natural extension would be the noun Christiandom. If you do a search for words that end with the suffix dom you'll get a list of about 200, NONE of which change the spelling of the root word. For example, Superstar becomes Superstardom, etc., etc...So, it's fairly safe to assume that Christian became Christiandom, and then was corrupted to Christendom, which became (under false pretenses) the standard spelling.

I rest my case.

 

[no1kandrfan]

I enjoyed this inside look back at the making of the Christmas albums - fascinating details - it's no wonder Richard calls this "Karen's album", given both her predominance throughout while he was pretty much AWOL from the arranging/orchestration of most of the songs...

One thing I would love to have heard is Spectrum's version of "Merry Christmas, Darling" that you mentioned they were doing before the A&M years...

And, I disagree on Richard's (and the recording engineer's) opinion about "I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day" - I don't hear too much vibrato on Karen's vocal at all (there is a lot more vibrato to be heard on "Have Yourself...") - her voice is simply beautiful strolling along in the "basement", in her resonant lower register, doing so in this song probably more than any other - what is truly remarkable is her breath control on the long phrases of the song - it takes more air to sing all those low notes at a decent volume and she manages to do that even given the length of those phrases - just when you think she can't possibly make it to the end of each, she does...she did this so often on so many songs that we shouldn't be surprised - but we are, and we're amazed and delighted. The song belongs.

I agree. "Bells" is a favorite.

 

[Sue Fave]

It's super-different to be thinking about Christmas music in the dead of summer, but any Carpenters podcast is OK with me. Good job, Chris.

 

[ullalume]

Fascinating that "immanuel" was intended as a big multi voice opening. Though this sounds great and would set the album up as a "carpenters" product I can't imagine it  not being Richard alone...kind of gives it a more serious tone somehow.

It also revealed to me just how low he must've been in early '78 that he couldn't even be bothered to write four part harmony for this 30 sec acapella piece. He must have been in better spirits a few months later when he did the vocal arrangement for "I believe you ".

 

[John Tkacik]

As has been noted in other threads on this forum, Richard was also upset about the lack of promotion for An Old Fashioned Christmas along with its' packaging. I remember being shocked to see it on the shelf at my local record store in December 1984. At the time, I thought that it would be the last time that we would ever hear something new from Richard and Karen.

 

[__michael__]

I agree. "Bells" is a favorite.

Its one of my favorites as well.

I found Longfellow's original poem "Christmas Bells" at poets.org from which the song was written. As you can see, 3 stanzas are excluded from the song.

I heard the bells on Christmas Day
Their old, familiar carols play,
And wild and sweet
The words repeat
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

And thought how, as the day had come,
The belfries of all Christendom
Had rolled along
The unbroken song
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

Till ringing, singing on its way,
The world revolved from night to day,
A voice, a chime,
A chant sublime
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

Then from each black, accursed mouth
The cannon thundered in the South,
And with the sound
The carols drowned
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

It was as if an earthquake rent
The hearth-stones of a continent,
And made forlorn
The households born
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

And in despair I bowed my head;
"There is no peace on earth," I said;
"For hate is strong,
And mocks the song
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!"

Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:
"God is not dead, nor doth He sleep;
The Wrong shall fail,
The Right prevail,
With peace on earth, good-will to men."

 

[JohnFB]

It's super-different to be thinking about Christmas music in the dead of summer, but any Carpenters podcast is OK with me. Good job, Chris.

Some of us play selected songs from the Christmas albums all year round - there is no "Season" for great music...

 

[Song4uman]

@Chris May
So good!! Thank you
Jonathan

 

[A&M Retro]

Honestly, I'd like to know just how much of the production duties were done by KAREN during this time. I have a feeling she did quite a bit considering what she accomplished for the Bruce Forsyth Show (as just one example). She was the Associate Producer, after all, but I'll bet she stepped up in a big way during 1977 and 1978.

 

[newvillefan]

Honestly, I'd like to know just how much of the production duties were done by KAREN during this time. I have a feeling she did quite a bit considering what she accomplished for the Bruce Forsyth Show (as just one example). She was the Associate Producer, after all, but I'll bet she stepped up in a big way during 1977 and 1978.

I’m right with you on this. Due to union rules, the backing tracks for Postman and I Need To Be In Love were recorded in the UK prior to this performance on Bruce Forsyth’s show. I would love to know how she managed to pull this off alone. Because honestly, the backing tracks - complete with all the background vocals - sound better than anything the duo ever did for any other show.

Studio time was obviously booked in advance, but apart from Peter Knight, did anyone else step in and produce those sessions? How long before the show were they recorded? And if Karen was under the impression she was there to promote the Christmas album, why was any of this studio time booked in advance in the first place? And where was it recorded?

 

[Geographer]

Well done Mr. May. I would argue this is the best podcast you've done yet. Many questions I have pondered (i.e. alternate version of Ave Maria) were addressed and answered AND, I learned a lot of information I had never heard before. You hit it out of the park with this one. As for future podcasts being "song by song" or "organic;" my opinion is that it is not an "either/or" situation. "Both/and" can, and should when appropriate, apply. Lastly, I'm on the side that "bells" is a classic being one of Karen's best vocal deliveries. Perhaps this is a case where Richard is too close to the product to see it as the fans do?

 

[Mike Blakesley]

I like a song-by-song format. I would love to see individual albums covered that way, such as A Song For You -- that album has SO much variety in it, and a lot of the songs have never really been discussed much, so it would be really cool to hear the stories behind the songs that weren't hits. Even the first album would be fascinating to be covered that way.

 

[ullalume]

Song by song for me.

I know Stephen and I have long wanted Richard to sit at a mixing deck and talk his way through every minute of their greatest albums and Chris....you're the closest thing to Richard we got!!!

 

[JohnFB]

Its one of my favorites as well.

I found Longfellow's original poem "Christmas Bells" at poets.org from which the song was written. As you can see, 3 stanzas are excluded from the song.

I heard the bells on Christmas Day
Their old, familiar carols play,
And wild and sweet
The words repeat
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

And thought how, as the day had come,
The belfries of all Christendom...

So, there's the source...poetic license...

 

[Richard’s namesake]

​

As a longtime Carpenters historian and coauthor of “Carpenters: The Musical Legacy” (with Mike Cidoni Lennox and Richard Carpenter, © 2021), I answer a number of questions submitted to me directly by Carpenters fans related to the duo’s Christmas catalog, while laying out a comprehensive breakdown of how the “Christmas Portrait” album was conceived—including its overall lack of promotion by A&M Records in 1978.

I also get into the Carpenters’ relationship to ABC with regard to the television specials, Mom & Dad Carpenter’s involvement in the second Christmas special in ’78 (which includes audio from a 2021 interview with Richard Carpenter), and Karen’s solo appearance on “Bruce Forsyth’s Big Night” in the UK in December that same year—a trip in which she was led to believe was set up to promote the “Christmas Portrait” album, only to find out otherwise after she arrived.

If you’re a fan of the Carpenters’ Christmas oeuvre including the behind-the-scenes backstory and trivia, you’ll want to check this out!

Thanks Chris. Hugely interesting and informative as ever!

 

[John Tkacik]

I’m right with you on this. Due to union rules, the backing tracks for Postman and I Need To Be In Love were recorded in the UK prior to this performance on Bruce Forsyth’s show. I would love to know how she managed to pull this off alone. Because honestly, the backing tracks - complete with all the background vocals - sound better than anything the duo ever did for any other show.

Studio time was obviously booked in advance, but apart from Peter Knight, did anyone else step in and produce those sessions? How long before the show were they recorded? And if Karen was under the impression she was there to promote the Christmas album, why was any of this studio time booked in advance in the first place? And where was it recorded?

On one of the threads for her performance, there are photos of the paperwork for the recording studio. If I recall correctly, sometime around December 10th.

 

[Chris May]

On one of the threads for her performance, there are photos of the paperwork for the recording studio. If I recall correctly, sometime around December 10th.

I posted those some time back. It was the master for “Postman.”

 

[John Tkacik]

I posted those some time back. It was the master for “Postman.”

Found them. Your Part 1 thread of the performance (Nov.2018)

 

[goodjeans]

Some of us play selected songs from the Christmas albums all year round - there is no "Season" for great music...

I played "Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas" last week, washing my trucks. It was about 94 degrees and I still got the chill factor, after so many years of playing this.

 

[jonwaterfield]

​

As a longtime Carpenters historian and coauthor of “Carpenters: The Musical Legacy” (with Mike Cidoni Lennox and Richard Carpenter, © 2021), I answer a number of questions submitted to me directly by Carpenters fans related to the duo’s Christmas catalog, while laying out a comprehensive breakdown of how the “Christmas Portrait” album was conceived—including its overall lack of promotion by A&M Records in 1978.

I also get into the Carpenters’ relationship to ABC with regard to the television specials, Mom & Dad Carpenter’s involvement in the second Christmas special in ’78 (which includes audio from a 2021 interview with Richard Carpenter), and Karen’s solo appearance on “Bruce Forsyth’s Big Night” in the UK in December that same year—a trip in which she was led to believe was set up to promote the “Christmas Portrait” album, only to find out otherwise after she arrived.

If you’re a fan of the Carpenters’ Christmas oeuvre including the behind-the-scenes backstory and trivia, you’ll want to check this out!

Just caught up with this video, Chris. Thanks for your insight - always so fascinating to hear the background to how tracks were recorded, and what was going on in Richard & Karen's world as they were producing these records.
Both Christmas albums have always held a special place in my affections - certainly for the recordings themselves, but also because I had always found Karen's singing to be so remarkable and Richard's production to be such perfection that I was always intrigued by some little slip-ups on these albums which don't appear elsewhere in their recorded output. I know people are going to roll their eyes over these small 'mistakes', and I hasten to add that they in no way spoil the recordings for me, but hearing more about what was happening with Richard at the time, and how much of the work was farmed out to others, it makes more sense.
You discuss two of the little slips - Karen singing "Christiandom" rather than "Christendom", and Richard singing "SHALL ransom captive Israel" rather than "AND ransom captive Israel", but there's a third which has always niggled at me. Karen's breath control was absolutely remarkable (you never hear ANY cover artists sing "Time and time again the chance for love has passed me by and all I know of love is how to live without it" in one breath!!!), so it's all the more unusual to hear her actually breathe in the middle of a word on Christmas Portrait. At the end of "Ave Maria", she sings "Nunc et in hora, in ho-(breath)-ora mortis nostrae". Know, I know - people are going to argue that it's in Latin, and no-one's going to notice, and what does it matter even if they do; but at the end of the day, Richard & Karen were both such perfectionists, it saddens me just a little that no-one caught it. Richard would NEVER have let her breathe in the middle of an English word; and I'm sure if someone had pointed it out to her, Karen would have corrected her phrasing and found a way to do it correctly. It is difficult to find a good place to breathe in that final section, but most have found a way to manage it. It proves to me that both of them were human - although pretty much all of their other output was so perfect, it sometimes makes you wonder!
At some point, you might ask Richard if he's ever noticed it!

 

[JohnFB]

Three points:

The entire phrase right up to the first Amen is very long - I would guess that Karen decided to take it where you say because she knew she would have to take a breath somewhere in there, and that seemed like the best place for her - it allowed her to finish that long phrase easily & beautifully - I agree with her choice - it sounds smooth & natural...

But she knew how she was going to handle that before recording started, so there was no "mistake" to point out to her.

And I don't really think that Richard "allowed" ("would never let") Karen to sing it this way, nor did he allow anything else at any other time for that matter when it came to her singing. Karen sang what she wanted to in the exact way she desired. Nobody told her how to sing or allowed her to sing in a certain way. Richard might have suggested something once in a while, and she may or may not have taken his suggestion or advice, but allowing her (never letting)...? I don't think so.