Carole King is an American songwriter and singer-songwriter. King and her former husband Gerry Goffin wrote more than two dozen chart hits for numerous artists during the 1960s, many of which have become standards. As a singer-songwriter, her Tapestry album topped the U.S. album chart for 15 weeks in 1971, and remained on the charts for more than six years. Her main success as a performer was in the first half of the 1970s, when she would sing her own songs, accompanying herself on the piano, in a series of albums and concerts; although she had been a successful songwriter for a decade previous, and has continued writing for others since. She had her first number 1 hit as a songwriter in 1960 at age 18, with "Will You Love Me Tomorrow", which she wrote with Goffin. In 1997, she co-wrote "The Reason", which was a hit for Celine Dion. In 2000, Joel Whitburn, a Billboard Magazine pop music researcher, named her the most successful female songwriter of 1955--99, because she wrote or co-wrote 118 pop hits on the Billboard Hot 100. In 2005 music historian Stuart Devoy found her the most successful female songwriter on the UK singles charts 1952 - 2005. King has made 25 solo albums, the most successful being Tapestry. Her most recent non-compilation album is Live at the Troubadour, a collaboration with James Taylor, which reached number 4 on the charts in its first week, and has sold over 600,000 copies. She has won four Grammy Awards and was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame for her songwriting. Carole's album Tapestry held the record for most weeks at #1 by a female artist for more than 20 years until broken by Whitney Houston (for the soundtrack album The Bodyguard), which was itself later topped by Adele (for the album 21 in 2012). Early life and sixties song-writing (1942-1969) Born Carol Joan Klein in February 1942 to a Jewish family in Manhattan, New York, her mother a teacher, and her father a fire-fighter. She grew up in Brooklyn; learning the piano when four years old, and in 1950, when eight, appearing on The Horn and Hardart Children's Hour, with a school friend, performing "If I Knew You Were Comin' I'd've Baked a Cake". While at James Madison High School in the 1950s, Carol Klein changed her name to Carole King, formed a band called the Co-Sines, and made demo records with her neighborhood friend Paul Simon for $25 a time. Her first official recording was the promotional single "The Right Girl" released by ABC-Paramount in 1958, which she wrote and sung to an arrangement by Don Costa. She attended Queens College, where she met Gerry Goffin, who was to become her song-writing partner. While she was 17, they married in a Jewish ceremony on Long Island in August 1959, after King had become pregnant with her first daughter, Louise. They left college and took daytime jobs, Goffin working as an assistant chemist, and King as a secretary, while writing songs together in the evening at an office belonging to Don Kirshner's Aldon Music at 1650 Broadway opposite the Brill Building. Neil Sedaka, who had dated King when he was still at high school, had a hit in 1959 with "Oh! Carol"; Goffin took the tune, and wrote the playful response "Oh! Neil", which King recorded and released as a single the same year; the b-side contained the Goffin-King song "A Very Special Boy". The single was not a success; however, after writing "Will You Love Me Tomorrow", which topped the American charts in 1960 in a recording by the Shirelles - becoming the first No.1 hit by a black girl group, Goffin and King gave up the daytime jobs in order to concentrate on writing. "Will You Love Me Tomorrow" has gone on to become a standard, recorded by numerous artists. During the sixties, with King writing the music and Goffin the lyrics, they wrote a string of classic songs for a variety of artists, such as "Take Good Care of My Baby" for Bobby Vee; "Up on the Roof" for the Drifters; "Chains", which was covere Image source and copyright details: http://wikipedia.org/wiki/File:CaroleKingHWOFDec2012.jpg Original article available at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carole_King

• published: 06 Nov 2013