Tag Archives: Rockingale

Carole King: Pearls – Songs of Goffin and King

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Legendary singer-songwriter revisits her catalog

Originally released in 1980, the last of four long-players King recorded for Capitol, this album is a hit-and-miss affair touched in several places by the slick studio sound of its era. The idea of having King revisit pearls in her songwriting catalog was a good one, but unlike Tapestry’s emotional reclaiming of “Will You Love Me Tomorrow?,” few of these renditions vastly improve on the earlier, better-known hits or provide revelatory insight into Goffin & King’s intentions. The album’s greatest commercial distinction was its single, a cover of the Chiffons’ “One Fine Day,” which gave King her last Top 40 hit, but the earthy power of her voice is compromised in several spots by smooth keyboards, studio-tuned tom-toms and bar band blues arrangements. Still, King gives emotionally fulfilling performances of Freddie Scott’s “Hey Girl,” Maxine Brown’s “Oh No, Not My Baby” and Blood, Sweat & Tears’ “Hi-De-Ho,” and thrives in a version of “Snow Queen” that weds The City’s original jazz groove to the Association’s vocal thickness. The closing cover of the Byrds’ “Goin’ Back” is truly superb, and shows just how easily King could reclaim her songs, as she’d done in bits and pieces on earlier records (e.g., “I Wasn’t Born to Follow” from Now That Everything’s Been Said, “Up on the Roof” from Writer and “Some Kind of Wonderful” from Music). Her first attempt to do so at album length pays some dividends, but isn’t the artistic triumph one might have hoped for. Rockingale Records (the label King founded in 2006) has returned this album to print in 2012 sans bonus tracks, and added an eight-page booklet that includes song lyrics and album artwork. [©2012 hyperbolium dot com]

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Carole King: Touch the Sky

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Carole King recovers from the death of her third husband

King’s third album for Capitol was originally released in 1978, and is now being reissued on her own Rockingdale imprint with the original track list and an eight-page booklet that includes liner notes, lyrics, photos and album art. Unlike her other Capitol albums, this was recorded in Austin, Texas, with a soulful group of musicians who were then backing Jerry Jeff Walker. The country-tinged sound is a great deal earthier than the slick studio work on Simple Things and Welcome Home, and King is more contemplative in voice and melancholy in lyrical mood, no doubt due to the death of her third husband, Rick Evers, earlier in the year.

That said, King remained, as she had been on her two previous Capitol albums, generally optimistic. There’s genuine pain in “Dreamlike I Wander,” but she realizes you can both remember and move forward, providing herself the opportunity to heal on “Walk With Me” and emotional advice and pep talks with “Move Lightly,” “Passing of the Days” and “Eagle.” Leo LeBlanc’s pedal steel and Mark Hallman’s mandolin fit nicely behind King’s more emotional vocals, and though she only plays piano on three tracks, Reese Wymans adds expressive keyboards throughout the rest of the album.

The socially conscious themes heard on Welcome Home continue here with the environmentalism of “Seeing Red” and “Time Gone By,” the latter inspired in part by Edward Abbey’s The Monkey Wrench Gang, and the back-to-the-land hippies-and-rednecks idealism of “Good Mountain People.” King digs deeper for this album than she’d done for the previous two, and the country-rock backings are both a welcome change and an excellent fit. The borrowed band is sensitive and soulful, providing delicate musical annotations for King’s lyrics and playing out several songs with deep instrumental grooves. After two pedestrian albums, this (and the next, Pearls) found King back on track. [©2012 hyperbolium dot com]

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Carol King: Welcome Home

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A middling Carole King album with a few moments of inspiration

Carole King’s second album for Capitol was originally released in 1978, and is now being reissued on her own Rockingale imprint with its original track list and an eight-page booklet that includes liner notes, lyrics, photos and album art. The songwriting continued her work with then-third-husband Rick Evers, who co-wrote two of the titles, and also continued King’s weakening commercial success. The album scratched just below the Hot 100, and a lone single (“Morning Sun”) just missed the A/C Top 40. As on her Capitol debut, Simple Things, King’s songs are incredibly optimistic, perhaps sparked by the communal living she and Evers had set up. Evers died, reportedly of a heroin overdose, a few months after the album was recorded, so the album’s sunny vibe was thrown into shadow by the songwriter’s loss.

King reaches back to the Brill Building for the cruisin’ themed “Main Street Saturday Night,” but it doesn’t crackle with the authenticity of her earlier work, and Evers’ new-agey lyrics for “Sun Bird” must have seemed deep at the time, but don’t hold a candle to the expressiveness of even King’s lesser works. Even stranger is the catchy “Venusian Diamond,” which combines late-60s Beatleisms with the too-clean studio sounds that marked many productions of the era. Even that’s explainable compared to the bandwagon “Disco Tech,” though even here you get the sense that King has a deeper sense of music’s primordial hold on the soul than many of the hacks writing disco at the time.

A more conventional pop expression of her love is heard in “Ride the Music,” and the following “Everybody’s Got the Spirit” continues the community theme which closed her previous album in “One.” The album’s most emotionally satisfying lyric is in its closing title song, offering the warmth of the California canyon music she wrote nearly a decade earlier. It too has its hippie moments, but closes a pleasant, but ultimately pedestrian Carole King album on a strong and memorable note. [©2012 hyperbolium dot com]

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Carole King: Simple Things

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Carole King’s 1977 Capitol debut

Previously reissued on CD in Japan, King’s 1977 Capitol debut is now being reissued domestically on her own Rockingale imprint with its original ten tracks and an eight-page booklet that includes lyrics and album art. Simple Things was King’s last album to reach the Top 20 and be certified Gold, breaking a string of Top 10’s that stretched back to 1971’s Tapestry. This set also includes her first collaborations with future-third-husband Rick Evans, who co-wrote three songs. Like all four of her Capitol releases, Simple Things showcases King’s songwriting craft, soulful voice and keyboard playing, but failed to make a serious dent in the charts. Even her fellow singer-songwriters – Carly Simon and James Taylor – were then having hits with other people’s material.

The peppy “Hard Rock Café” (which sounds to be a celebration of hometown gathering places, rather than an advertisement for the then-yet-to-franchise London restaurant) climbed into the Top 40, and the album’s optimistic title track found success on the A/C chart. Fans will find many fine album tracks, all of which are relentlessly optimistic. Even the song of separation, “You’re the One Who Knows,” leans on the lasting value of what was, rather than dwelling on what’s no more, and the closing “One” speaks to King’s growing social conscience. The backing band is professional but didn’t add anything particularly memorable to an album that’s basically a journeyman among the better entries in King’s catalog. [©2012 hyperbolium dot com]

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