since Osborn was usually in sessions each night until midnight.
Unbeknownst to Karen and Richard, Don Zacklin had asked Friberg to recommend other talented kids from the college to audition for Magic Lamp. So when Karen and Richard showed up, Zacklin and Osborn assumed theyâd come along to audition, too. The brother and sister were befuddled but cooperative. âKaren ended up singing that night,â Friberg says. âShe sang and that was the end of me! To me, her voice was just like nothing else Iâd ever heard before or since. It was just so distinctive. To think of all the times I saw her sitting behind the drums, never knowing that she could even sing. Itâs really weird the way things worked out because that night was what started the whole thing for them. If Richard had said, âIâm busy,â I probably would have gotten somebody else, and they never would have met Joe.â
Captivated by Karenâs raw, husky voice, Osborn asked musician friend and drummer Mickey Jones to travel with him to Downey tosee this âchubby little girlâ perform. âWe went to a small dinner house where we heard Karen sing,â Jones recalls. âI was shocked. I had never heard a more pure voice in my life.â Hearing Karen again, Osborn was won over. He told Mickey Jones he planned to contact the girlâs parents. He wanted to record her. This was surely good news, but it did not sit well with Agnes Carpenter. She was set on the idea of her son becoming the familyâs famous musician. After all, theyâd moved across the country in hopes of Richard getting into the music business, and now he was being disregarded in favor of his kid sister, a musical novice. âI know that Agnes was really, really mad about that,â recalls Evelyn Wallace. âThere are many piano players that are very, very good. But letâs face it, all pianos more or less sound alike. All voices do not.â
On May 9, 1966, Osborn signed sixteen-year-old Karen Carpenter to Magic Lamp Recordsâ small roster of artists, which included Johnny Burnette, James Burton, Mickey Jones, Dean Torrence (of Jan and Dean), and Vince Edwards, best known as televisionâs Dr. Ben Casey. Since Karen was not of legal age, Agnes and Harold signed on her behalf. Two days later, Magic Lampâs publishing division, Lightup Music, signed Richard as a songwriter in an effort to help reconcile Agnesâs displeasure with Osborn having initially overlooked her sonâs talents. âJoe thought that Richard was a pain in the ass,â Mickey Jones recalls. âRichard not only wanted to play the piano but to run everything. Joe did not want him around when he was working with Karen, so he made Richard wait outside the studio.â
Any resentment between the two soon gave way to new friendships as Karen, Richard, and Wes Jacobs began spending hours on end at Osbornâs studio. That summer Karen recorded several of Richardâs original compositions including âThe Parting of Our Ways,â âDonât Tell Me,â âLooking for Love,â and âIâll Be Yours.â She also played drums on the recordings, which featured Osborn on electric bass and sometimes Wes Jacobs on upright bass. Richard was on piano and the Chamberlin Music Master, a version of the Mellotron, both of which were popular analog synthesizers that provided taped string and woodwind sounds. Osborn used a Scully 4-track recorder and Neumann U87 condenser microphones to tape the sessions. Playback was done through Altec 604 studio monitors. When four tracks were complete, they were bouncedor âping-pongedâ to his Scully 2-track machine, which condensed multiple tracks to two or sometimes even one. This process freed additional tracks for overdubbing and layering voices or instruments.
âLooking for Love / Iâll Be Yoursâ (ML 704) was the first and only single by Karen Carpenter for
Christian Alex Breitenstein