house on Fidler.
Richard met trumpet major Dan Friberg, a junior college transfer, in choir during the fall of 1965. The two had several other classes together including music history and counterpoint, and Richard began to call upon Friberg when he needed a trumpet player for the trioâs weekend gigs. âKaren was the drummer and didnât sing at all yet,â Friberg recalls. âShe was listening to Louie Bellson and Buddy Rich. Those were some of her idols. I remember going into her room at their house, and she had pictures on the wall of all these great drummers. Her goal was to be as good as they were. She was great then, by all I could tell, but not good enough for her.â Friberg became a recurring soloist with the Richard Carpenter Trio. âWe had a girl vocalist named Margaret Shanor,â he recalls. âWith Karen strictly drumming at this point, Margaret fronted the group.â
I T WAS not until 1966 that Karen came into her full voice. Although she had always sung in tune, her voice had lacked vibrato and any real depth or presence. It was mostly a light falsetto with a noticeable break between her lower and higher registers. â I canât really remember why I started to sing,â Karen said in 1975. âIt just kind of happened. But I never really discovered the voice that you know nowâthe low oneâuntil later, when I was sixteen. I used to sing in this upper voice, and I didnât like it. I was uncomfortable, so I think I would tend to shy away from it because I didnât think I was that good. And I wasnât.â
Karen deplored the sound of her tape-recorded voice at first but continued to experiment with her abilities as a singer. â Itâs kind of corny to listen back,â she recalled. âWe had an original recording ofone of Richardâs songs that Iâd sung, and the range was too big. Iâd be going from the low voice to the high voice, and even though it was all in tune, the top part was feeble and it was different. You wouldnât know it was me. Then suddenly one day out popped this voice, and it was natural.â
Richard soon introduced Karen to his college choir director, Frank Pooler, with whom she began taking voice lessons every Saturday morning. This would be the only formal vocal training she would ever receive. âWeâd have a half-hour or forty-five-minute voice lesson,â Pooler says. âShe always had her drums with her in the car. From there Richard would take her over to study with Bill Douglass in Hollywood.â The lessons with Pooler focused on both classical voice study and pop music. The first half was devoted to art songs by Beethoven, Schumann, and other composers. During the last half Karen would sing the new songs Richard had written. âKaren was a born pop singer,â Pooler says. âShe wasnât particularly interested in that other stuff, but she had to do it to get into school.â
Unlike Richard, who practiced endlessly, Karen rarely, if ever, rehearsed between her lessons with Pooler. Concerned that their money might be better spent somewhere else, the Carpenter parents met with her teacher to inquire about Karenâs progress. âThe folks were very supportive of both of them, but they werenât rich. I was getting paid five bucks an hour for those lessons, and they finally came up to see if Karen was getting her moneyâs worth!â
Pooler told Karen her voice was âartyâ and ânaturalâ and discouraged the idea of subjecting it to any sort of intense vocal training. â He heard this voice and he wouldnât touch it,â Karen said in 1975. âHe said I should not train it . . . and the only thing I did work with him on was developing my upper register so I would have a full three-octave range. . . . Something else you donât think about is being able to sing in tune. Thank God I was born with it! Itâs something
Rebecca Hamilton, Conner Kressley