Track Listing

Disc 1:

1. Caravan
2. Parting Of Our Ways, The
3. Looking For Love
4. I'll Be Yours
5. Iced Tea
6. You'll Love Me
7. All I Can Do
8. Don't Be Afraid
9. Invocation
10. Your Wonderful Parade
11. All Of My Life
12. Eve
13. Ticket To Ride
14. Get Together
15. Interview
16. Love Is Surrender
17. Maybe It's You
18. Close To You, (They Long To Be)
19. Mr. Guder
20. We've Only Just Begun
21. Merry Christmas Darling
22. For All We Know (from "Lovers And Other Strangers")

Disc 2:

1. Rainy Days And Mondays
2. Superstar
3. Let Me Be The One
4. Bless The Beasts And Children (from "Bless The Beasts And Children")
5. Hurting Each Other
6. It's Going To Take Some Time
7. I Won't Last A Day Without You
8. Song For You, A
9. Top Of The World
10. Goodbye To Love
11. This Masquerade
12. Sing
13. Jambalaya (On The Bayou)
14. Yesterday Once More
15. Oldies Medley: Fun, Fun, Fun / End Of The World, The / Da Doo Ron Ron / Deadman's Curve / Johnny Angel / Night Has A Thousand Eyes, The / Our Day Will Come / One Fine Day
16. Yesterday Once More (Reprise)
17. Radio Contest Outtakes

Disc 3:

1. Morinaga Hi-Crown Chocolate Commercial
2. Please Mr. Postman
3. Santa Claus Is Coming To Town
4. Only Yesterday
5. Solitaire
6. Tryin' To Get The Feeling Again
7. Good Friends Are For Keeps
8. Ordinary Fool
9. Sandy
10. There's A Kind Of Hush (All Over The World)
11. I Need To Be In Love
12. From This Moment On
13. Suntory Pop Jingle #1
14. Suntory Pop Jingle #2
15. All You Get From Love Is A Love Song
16. Calling Occupants Of Interplanetary Craft (The Recognized Anthem Of World Contact Day)
17. Sweet, Sweet Smile
18. Christ Is Born
19. White Christmas
20. Little Altar Boy
21. Ave Maria

Disc 4:

1. Where Do I Go From Here
2. Little Girl Blue
3. I Believe You
4. If I Had You
5. Karen/Ella Medley: This Masquerade / My Funny Valentine / I'll Be Seeing You / Someone To Watch Over Me / As Time Goes By / Don't Get Around Much Any More / I Let A Song Go Out Of My Heart
6. 1980 Medley: Sing / Knowing When To Leave / Make It Easy On Yourself / Someday / We've Only Just Begun
7. Make Believe It's Your First Time
8. Touch Me When We're Dancing
9. When It's Gone
10. Because We Are In Love (The Wedding Song)
11. Those Good Old Dreams
12. Now
13. Karen's Theme

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #15078 in Music
• Released on: 2006-08-31
• Number of discs: 4
• Format: Box set

Amazon.com
The sprawling suburbs that sprang up south of Los Angeles during the postwar industrial boom gave white pop two of its most accomplished icons, Brian Wilson's Beach Boys, out of Hawthorne, and Downey's Carpenters. That geography subtly permeates the first disc of this four-CD, 89-track anthology, from the living room demos and indie singles that pushed them to a Hollywood Bowl battle of the bands victory while still teens to their first triumphs for A&M Records, just across town in Hollywood. Assembled, burnished, and annotated with loving care by Richard Carpenter, it's a collection that chronicles an expansive musical vision rooted in prerock pop, yet fueled by the ambitious, neo-baroque arrangement consciousness of the '60s L.A. music scene. Karen Carpenter's warm, inviting alto may have been the band's trademark, but it's Richard's perfect studio frameworks--and a far-ranging taste for material that spans standards, Bacharach's "Close to You," Leon Russell's "Superstar," "A Song for You, " and "This Masquerade"--that made the Carpenters' music considerably more than the sum of its parts. Filled with a wealth of rare outtakes, remixes, radio spots, TV performances (including a duet-medley between Karen and the great Ella Fitzgerald), and commercial spots, Essential is exactly that for a Carpenters fan. --Jerry McCulley

Customer Reviews

Essential And Telling
During the era of the late 1960s to the mid 1970s, there was a certain kind of music being made by a segment of the musical population. To counteract the difficult, sometimes unbearable issues that were happening historically, there seemed to be a kind of musical quilt being tapestried (if I may borrow a Carole King word here) to help people cope, to comfort or encourage.

Among the performers that fell into this category were Karen and Richard Carpenter. Karen's unforgettable and golden voice was the main instrument in delivering these beautiful songs, while Richard's keyboard instrumentation and song arrangements showcased his sister brilliantly.

Finally! What we have in this box set is a proper treatment of each song in their catalog. Every recording is presented singularly, showcased as the true gems they are. There is no cross fading from song to song; there is no obvious "updating" these tracks with extra instrumentation for their own sake as there had been in previous collections. You are getting each and every song as they were intended to be heard and it is nothing short of brilliant.

But the telling thing about this exquisite four disc set, as you listen to it, is the overall theme. A constant message in Carpenters songs is love, of course, but most especially it's about unrequited love, losing love or not being able to find love. What you might not know is that this existed even before the world had heard of the group.

Here, you get to hear songs like "Looking For Love" and "The Parting Of Our Ways," songs recorded before their breakout hit "(They Long To Be) Close To You," and that demonstrates that overriding theme of searching and dealing with heartache and heartbreak that was echoed in Karen's personal life.

This is more than a collection of hits from a group that helped to define an era in American History, it's a document for them, a biography for this sister and brother, and it is spacious, gentle, well crafted and a must for collectors of Carpenters' material.

Essential Carpenters, especially early Carpenters
If you were to obtain only one Carpenters greatest hits compilation, this would be it. As a Carpenters fan myself, most all of the Carpenters songs are hits, so there are always a few songs missing that you would like to have been included. For a beginning Carpenters fan, however, this is a very good collection. Especially valuable are the early Carpenters collection, disc one of four, 1965-1970. It has some very good recordings of pre-Carpenters songs, and some original recordings of early Carpenters songs, which were later re-recorded for the Carpenters albums. Richard Carpenter's booklet narratives explaining the history of the songs is very informative and entertaining. One interesting thing Mr. Carpenter said was that most of the master tapes recordings of the pre-Carpenters from their early days on the Magic Lamp label with Joe Osborn were destroyed in a fire in 1975. This may explain at least partially why there are so few recordings of early (pre)-Carpenters music available. In any event, I highly recommend this album, most especially for its early Carpenters songs, which you may not be able to find anywhere else.

Essential (and unessential, too)
The output and legacy of The Carpenters is as easy to overrate as it is to underrate. It's true that they were rather catagorically dismissed as uncool during their heyday, but in the haste many folks make these days to say, "Hey, we really did love 'em, we just couldn't SAY so," there were some pretty good reasons why The Carpenters got dissed back then. Exhibit A is "Sing," a little ditty that can put you into insulin shock upon first contact, and their renditions of "Please Mr. Postman" and "Ticket To Ride" didn't do the Marvelettes or the Beatles any favors either. But there's also a lot of music Richard and Karen Carpenter put out that not only justifies the belated critical acceptance today, it exceeds expectations the casual listener might have that this was just a sappy pop duo and nothing more.

Much of the evidence for this can be found on this collection, where the hits ("Close To You," "For All We Know," "We've Only Just Begun," etc.) comingle with less-heard material, including Richard and Karen's early days as two-thirds of the jazzy Richard Carpenter Trio (a solid rendition of the Duke Ellington standard, "Caravan") and album tracks/singles that deserved more exposure ("Maybe It's You," "Ordinary Fool," "Make Believe It's Your First Time"), and some genuinely inventive and WEIRD stuff as well (a drum roll for "Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft" and the rock 'n roll medley from the album NOW & THEN). There's also, inevitably, the tracks you skip over immediately when they come on, but two things are predominant throughout. There's Richard Carpenter's arrangements, which, when they work, REALLY soar into pop heaven, not unlike those of fellow Angeleno Brian Wilson. But most of all, there's the lovely voice of Karen Carpenter, as graceful and full a voice as any pop singer could ever want. She was capable of making you fall in love, breaking your heart and putting your emotions in a whirl, sometimes all in the same song. When the two siblings' particular talents click together, as they often do on this retrospective, few things in pop music sound better.

I have a few quibbles with this collection, more with omissions than with what's included. I would have like to have seen "Look To Your Dreams" from VOICE OF THE HEART included; for my money, it showcases the finest singing Karen Carpenter ever did. And the inclusion of "Mr. Guder" and "Your Wonderful Parade" just underscores the fact that songs of social protest were not The Carpenter's strong suit. But balance this out with what's here ("Solitaire," "Those Good Old Dreams," "Goodbye To Love," the list goes on and on) and what you have left is ample proof that there was much depth and breadth to The Carpenters....and that they were pretty cool after all.