Richard's Christmas Album

I remember it. It just doesn't mean much. The solo album was just about the worst seller in A&M history. "Something in Your Eyes" got there based on Dusty. We also can't forget that that solo record is 31 years-old. Even if it had attracted a lot of attention, it would long since have dissipated. I'm actually pretty surprised either of his solo records are on the streamers but they're cheap enough to add so I guess UMG thought, "Why not"?

We've seen other odd things in the music industry. Like who would have thought that a dead artist (Louis Armstrong) would be able to make it big on the charts nearly 2 decades after they had passed away?

Or how about Brian Wilson. Sure he had a single released in the 60's that didn't do all that well, and before 2005 he didn't do that well on the charts with his solo albums and singles, and yet it seems that since he released his version of Smile and his Christmas album What I Really Want For Christmas, his solo career has really taken off.

With Richard, I think the problem was that he really didn't do much of anything to really promote his solo stuff or even get his name out there. Like even releasing the odd solo single over the past 20 years, or even doing a solo track and having that promoted on a Carpenters compilation (think of what it would've been like if he had included a new solo track on 40/40 or The Nation's Best, with a sticker on the front claiming "Featuring a NEW Solo track by Richard Carpenter.)
 
Certainly, something is in the offing--
that latest promo spot for the Vinyl Collection, when asked why Christmas Portrait
was not a part of this new Vinyl Collection,
has Richard commenting (3m20s):
"or, maybe to celebrate another anniversary we can remaster....."
 
We've seen other odd things in the music industry. Like who would have thought that a dead artist (Louis Armstrong) would be able to make it big on the charts nearly 2 decades after they had passed away?

Or how about Brian Wilson. Sure he had a single released in the 60's that didn't do all that well, and before 2005 he didn't do that well on the charts with his solo albums and singles, and yet it seems that since he released his version of Smile and his Christmas album What I Really Want For Christmas, his solo career has really taken off.

With Richard, I think the problem was that he really didn't do much of anything to really promote his solo stuff or even get his name out there. Like even releasing the odd solo single over the past 20 years, or even doing a solo track and having that promoted on a Carpenters compilation (think of what it would've been like if he had included a new solo track on 40/40 or The Nation's Best, with a sticker on the front claiming "Featuring a NEW Solo track by Richard Carpenter.)

Louis Armstrong and Brian Wilson had name recognition. Richard didn't. Therein lies the issue. No one would have cared about a new solo Richard track at any point - 1985 or otherwise.

Ed
 
Louis Armstrong and Brian Wilson had name recognition. Richard didn't. Therein lies the issue. No one would have cared about a new solo Richard track at any point - 1985 or otherwise.

Ed
In the 80’s Armstrong and Wilson did not have name recognition. With Armstrong having been dead since 71, the only reason he hit big in the 80’s was because of “Good Morning Vietnam”. And Brian Wilson—-even to this day, is still linked to The Beach Boys even though his solo career has taken off in the last decade.
 
In the 80’s Armstrong and Wilson did not have name recognition. With Armstrong having been dead since 71, the only reason he hit big in the 80’s was because of “Good Morning Vietnam”. And Brian Wilson—-even to this day, is still linked to The Beach Boys even though his solo career has taken off in the last decade.

Brian Wilson has had name recognition for decades. Louis Armstrong is a legend and will always be known. Richard is not in the class as a solo artist.

Ed
 
Brian Wilson has had name recognition for decades. Louis Armstrong is a legend and will always be known. Richard is not in the class as a solo artist.

Ed
Brian Wilson has not had name recognition for decades as a solo artist. He's always been linked to the Beach Boys, just like Richard is linked to the Carpenters. And Armstong, by the 80's he'd been relegated to the footnotes of history books with the Andrews Sisters and Glenn Miller. Barely played, and on his way to being forgotten by later generations, including me.
 
Brian Wilson has not had name recognition for decades as a solo artist. He's always been linked to the Beach Boys, just like Richard is linked to the Carpenters. And Armstong, by the 80's he'd been relegated to the footnotes of history books with the Andrews Sisters and Glenn Miller. Barely played, and on his way to being forgotten by later generations, including me.

I promise I say this respectfully but is pretty off. Brian, while linked to The Beach Boys inextricably, also very much has his own identity, if not his own sound. He’s also able to get labels interested in what he’s doing because of his own legendary status. Sire Records signed him for his first solo record note unheard. He does albums and he gets them out with little issue on major labels. The Armstrong thing is way off. Louis was almost always a solo character and remains a prominent influence for any trumpet player. That you’ve intimated that you’ve forgotten him suggests only that some research might be in order.

Either way, Richard is Carpenters and has done little to carve out his own niche. He certainly could have. That his first solo album was released so much after “Made in America” did him zero favors. The record died and the next one didn’t come until years later. When it did, it had little to recommend it. I’ve heard it and only need to hear it once, though it’s hardly terrible by any means; there just isn’t any attempt to find himself as an artist. He’s still coasting on what was.

Had Richard done more to establish an individual voice (or, really, done anything), the quandary he finds himself in now might not exist at all.
 
He’s still coasting on what was. Had Richard done more to establish an individual voice (or, really, done anything), the quandary he finds himself in now might not exist at all.

This begs the question why no major artist was tripping over themselves to work with him once he was solo after Karen’s death. He had a plethora of skills to offer but ended up working (for the most part) with Z list artists. He deserved more than that but in many respects he was/is his own worst enemy. He chose to stick with the past, remixing the Carpenters catalogue to the n’th degree and choosing soundalikes instead of carving himself a career as a successful record producer, arranger, composer etc etc. He could have had an entirely new, successful, second career after Karen’s death.
 
Hindsight is 20/20. There's a lot of shouda, coulda, woulda going on here. He did what he did, that's the end of the story. And, it is now too late to go back and change course.

The key to staying relevant is to keep putting out new releases, not just endless greatest-hits packages. And if an act loses its major voice, but not its leader, then it's up to the leader to either find a new voice or start a new act. Anything to keep the music flowing.

The minute an act stops doing that, their relevance decreases the more time passes.
 
This begs the question why no major artist was tripping over themselves to work with him once he was solo after Karen’s death. He had a plethora of skills to offer but ended up working (for the most part) with Z list artists. He deserved more than that but in many respects he was/is his own worst enemy. He chose to stick with the past, remixing the Carpenters catalogue to the n’th degree and choosing soundalikes instead of carving himself a career as a successful record producer, arranger, composer etc etc. He could have had an entirely new, successful, second career after Karen’s death.

He did so little after she passed. It’s like he didn’t imagine a career after her. He certainly had it if he wanted. His days as a pop presence were, of course, over but he could have done movie scoring or things like that.

Ed
 
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We bring up (myself included) about how Richard should have scored a movie and we get that primarily because Karen's the one that mentioned it on GMA. However look at all the time that went by without an album and in 81' he only penned 2 songs on MIA and both are not solo penned but credited with John Bettis. Those songs were also album cuts not hit songs. Could this have been more of just an accolade Karen was trying to throw out there?
 
We bring up (myself included) about how Richard should have scored a movie and we get that primarily because Karen's the one that mentioned it on GMA. However look at all the time that went by without an album and in 81' he only penned 2 songs on MIA and both are not solo penned but credited with John Bettis. Those songs were also album cuts not hit songs. Could this have been more of just an accolade Karen was trying to throw out there?

He's far more an orchestrator than he is an arranger. Movies or TV call for that and would be perfect for his approach.

Ed
 
He's far more an orchestrator than he is an arranger. Movies or TV call for that and would be perfect for his approach.

Ed
I agree. I think Richard would've been a natural to do movie/TV scores. His work on the "Karen Carpenter Story" showed that early on. I believed when Karen died, he was lost. He didn't know what to do. He was such a talented pianist; he could've done classical concert CDs of Beethoven or Chopin. Hell, Wes Jacobs made a living playing tuba with the Detroit Symphony. I think the emotional impact of Karen's passing, technically ended his career.
 
He apparently passed up offers to score (at least one) movies in the 1970's.
So, I wonder if he "burned that bridge."
The desire to always be The Producer, Arranger, Composer and Pianist is simply too much for one person.
I always felt he should have turned the "producer" part over to another.
There needs to be an unbiased ear in the studio.
 
He apparently passed up offers to score (at least one) movies in the 1970's.
So, I wonder if he "burned that bridge."
The desire to always be The Producer, Arranger, Composer and Pianist is simply too much for one person.
I always felt he should have turned the "producer" part over to another.
There needs to be an unbiased ear in the studio.

He tried on Passage. Only Joe Wissert was the least bit interested.

Ed
 
I promise I say this respectfully but is pretty off. Brian, while linked to The Beach Boys inextricably, also very much has his own identity, if not his own sound. He’s also able to get labels interested in what he’s doing because of his own legendary status. Sire Records signed him for his first solo record note unheard. He does albums and he gets them out with little issue on major labels. The Armstrong thing is way off. Louis was almost always a solo character and remains a prominent influence for any trumpet player. That you’ve intimated that you’ve forgotten him suggests only that some research might be in order.
Sorry, but I disagree. With Armstrong (and Carpenters even) I wasn't born till way after he was dead. I remember hearing about him in music class, but as I said, he was a footnote in the history books or the music teacher played a documentary that talked about him, and really the only way that he was at all known to my generation was because of the success of the reissuing of his 1967 single What A Wonderful World in 1988 in connection with its appearance in the movie Good Morning, Vietnam. And as for his solo status, when I check my copy of his Gold & 20th Century Masters Christmas CD, for each song it actually credits it to "Louis Armstrong & His Hot Five" or "Louis Armstrong & the Hot Seven" or whatever the band (and for one song Bing Crosby) was called when the original 78 & 45 was issued. As far as Pop music was concerned, Louis Armstrong was dead in the 70's and 80's.

And with Brian Wilson, to most people they don't even recognize his name, unless you mention the Beach Boys. I remember going to his concert at the NAC in 2011, and people were asking me who I was going to see, and no one recognized his name when I said it, but as soon as I mentioned "The Beach Boys", they knew who I was talking about. And while his albums and songs have made the charts, they have not charted as high as the Beach Boys album (his highest solo album hit #13 (2004's Smile) while the 2012 That's Why God Made The Radio hit #3). And his second and third solo albums did not chart in the US.

As for Richard and labels, well, his two solos were released on A&M way before Universal even had anything to do with A&M and Richard was getting into feuds with them (plus considering that A&M no longer exists, except in brand for reissues, he no longer has a home label, since it sounds like he didn't have to worry about looking for a different label because of what Alpert and Moss told him after Karen's death). Plus he might've been funding the 20001-2002 recordings himself knowing that whenever he did release the album, he'd just need a distributor. I was just recently looking at the PBS Christmas DVD, and on there, and even on the menu's and the program credits, there is no mention of Universal or A&M anywhere, there's only mention of "Downey-Bronx" (could Richard have gained control of the Carpenters Christmas music during the various lawsuits to the point that he doesn't need to credit A&M or Universal?). So, how do we know that he won't issue his Christmas CD under his own "Downey-Bronx" company with, say, Sony handling distribution? Right now he's still recording the album, so he may not be at the point of shopping it around to distributors.
 
Sorry, but I disagree. With Armstrong (and Carpenters even) I wasn't born till way after he was dead. I remember hearing about him in music class, but as I said, he was a footnote in the history books or the music teacher played a documentary that talked about him, and really the only way that he was at all known to my generation was because of the success of the reissuing of his 1967 single What A Wonderful World in 1988 in connection with its appearance in the movie Good Morning, Vietnam. And as for his solo status, when I check my copy of his Gold & 20th Century Masters Christmas CD, for each song it actually credits it to "Louis Armstrong & His Hot Five" or "Louis Armstrong & the Hot Seven" or whatever the band (and for one song Bing Crosby) was called when the original 78 & 45 was issued. As far as Pop music was concerned, Louis Armstrong was dead in the 70's and 80's.

And with Brian Wilson, to most people they don't even recognize his name, unless you mention the Beach Boys. I remember going to his concert at the NAC in 2011, and people were asking me who I was going to see, and no one recognized his name when I said it, but as soon as I mentioned "The Beach Boys", they knew who I was talking about. And while his albums and songs have made the charts, they have not charted as high as the Beach Boys album (his highest solo album hit #13 (2004's Smile) while the 2012 That's Why God Made The Radio hit #3). And his second and third solo albums did not chart in the US.

We'll agree to disagree on all this. Going round and round makes little sense.

As for Richard and labels, well, his two solos were released on A&M way before Universal even had anything to do with A&M and Richard was getting into feuds with them (plus considering that A&M no longer exists, except in brand for reissues, he no longer has a home label, since it sounds like he didn't have to worry about looking for a different label because of what Alpert and Moss told him after Karen's death). Plus he might've been funding the 20001-2002 recordings himself knowing that whenever he did release the album, he'd just need a distributor. I was just recently looking at the PBS Christmas DVD, and on there, and even on the menu's and the program credits, there is no mention of Universal or A&M anywhere, there's only mention of "Downey-Bronx" (could Richard have gained control of the Carpenters Christmas music during the various lawsuits to the point that he doesn't need to credit A&M or Universal?). So, how do we know that he won't issue his Christmas CD under his own "Downey-Bronx" company with, say, Sony handling distribution? Right now he's still recording the album, so he may not be at the point of shopping it around to distributors.

I'd be very surprised if he got a major distributor without a lost Karen track or something to that effect. Solo Richard music is of no commercial interest. It never was.

Ed
 
Background:
The Carpenters' Television Specials were all completed/filmed under the umbrella of
"Downey-Bronx." This was a television "production" company.
This, a company created through Weintraub and Wolfen (Manager and Lawyer, resp.).
It is not , nor was it ever, involved with the ownership, distribution, or creation of recorded music.
To my knowledge it is no longer an"active" entity.
 
Background:
The Carpenters' Television Specials were all completed/filmed under the umbrella of
"Downey-Bronx." This was a television "production" company.
This, a company created through Weintraub and Wolfen (Manager and Lawyer, resp.).
It is not , nor was it ever, involved with the ownership, distribution, or creation of recorded music.
To my knowledge it is no longer an"active" entity.
We do know that, according to the liner notes for As Time Goes By that "Downey-Bronx" and Karen and Richard did hire a remote recording company to record Ella Fitzgerald's vocals separately during the videotaping of Music, Music, Music

www.richardandkarencarpenter.com/SN_Karen-Ella%20Medley.htm said:
As a result, this medley, featuring two great female vocalists together, posed a conundrum for me: how to get live and pre-recorded vocalists together, in two places, and two different times, on one 24-track tape for posterity? It turned out not to be much of a problem. On Sunday, March 2, 1980, her 30th birthday, Karen recorded her selections in Studio D, A&M Studios. They might as well have been live as she got them all in one take. Since Karen and I co-owned the ABC specials, we hired a remote recording service to record Ella at the ABC television studios at Prospect Avenue, where we were videotaping.

According to that quote, aside from recording at A&M studios, A&M had nothing to do with the music for the specials and that Karen and Richard co-owned the music.
 
Schmidt's Biography mentions that Weintraub formed this production company (Downey-Bronx)
specifically in 1976..."to produce their television specials."
If you notice, by the time of the airing of the CBS-TV Movie,
it is "Weintraub Entertainment Group Television." (Not Downey-Bronx).
 
He tried on Passage. Only Joe Wissert was the least bit interested.

It would have been interesting to see what another producer would have done with them as a duo. I think it would have been incredibly difficult for Richard not to get involved or try to interfere with the producer’s role, which is probably what put most of them off.
 
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