Before we knew her

Carole King had authored and done demos of some very familiar chestnuts and other humable tunes from the 60s. If you are a Carole King fan and want a unique experience, quite different from the solo albums, buy this set. I've never seen it elsewhere. Many of these tunes were never recorded commercially, the piano arrangements are extremely simple as to not detract from the tunes, and her voice had not picked up the rich gravelly intimacy that made you want to play Tapestry 1000 times. If you are expecting the Carole King of Tapestry and beyond you will be disappointed; if you are a fan and are curious about the days when that talent was still forming but had not found that unique voice, I think you'll like it.

THE RIGHT GIRL Indeed!

Here lies Carole the Pop King's TRUE tapestry.

Although these 57 slices of pure, three-minute Brill beauty are already nearing their half-decade mark, each and every single one remain, and still contain, the undeniable Sound of the Future in oh so many ways.

In fact, all you have to do is conjure the name of YOUR favorite song(writer) from the Sixties through today, and you'll no doubt easily uncover its Top 40 ancestry still shining loud and true somewhere upon these two jam-packed discs.

Indeed, the magic's in the melody -- always has been; always shall be -- and there's magic to spare, in all its monophonic, 45-RPM magnificence, throughout this wholly indispensable collection.

Oh, Carole!
(...and Gerry, Barry, Cynthia and Ellie too)

Hit songwriter's sketchbook

In concept, this disc (along with its companion volumes focusing on other Brill Building habitues) should be the Rosetta Stone of early-60s pop: a blueprint of demos for the hits that would shape the Brill Building legend. But what's actually here is a good deal more complex: a mix of early King solo work, demos for songs that were either never recorded commercially or never broke in the charts, and a smattering of demos for bona fide chart toppers. And though this isn't as immediately satisfying as a disc full of hit demos, a spin through these 57 tracks provides tremendous illumination of just how Goffin & King came to their success.

What's really evidenced here is the sheer hard work that went into creating the Brill Building's success. The unfiltered depiction of Goffin & King's songwriting yields uncommercialized songs and non-hits that range from very good to merely competent to surprisingly bad. Without the editing of publishers, producers, artists, managers, song pluggers and DJs, Goffin & King's output shows itself to include an equal (if not greater) number of flops than finds.

Perhaps this mixed songwriting success shouldn't be surprising, but given the rose-colored memory of oldies radio, it's easy to forget that such stellar talents could turn out such banalities as "Boomerang" (the slide whistle would be bad enough if it didn't accompany a chorus like, "Like a boom-boom-boom-boom-boomerang, I keep boomerangin' back to you."). On the other hand, one has to wonder why "I Didn't Have Any Summer Romance" didn't get into the hands of Annette Funicello, and why Connie Francis never sang "Queen of the Beach" or "Goin' Wild."

Several tunes, like "There Goes My Lover," are just a notch less stellar than the Goffin & King hits, and getting a feel for that narrow gap between success and also-ran is a good part of what this set allows. Also included are better known early King solo sides like "Right Girl," "Oh Neil" (her answer to Neil Sedaka's "Oh Carole"), "He's a Bad Boy," and "It Might as Well Rain Until September."

King's post-Everly's recording of "Crying in the Rain" is moving for its more fallible harmonies, as is her take of Neil Sedaka's "Breaking Up is Hard To Do." Her demo of Bobby Vee's "Take Good Care of My Baby" makes for an ironic twist, given the lyric's longing for "her." The demo of the answer song ("He Takes Good Care of Your Baby"), eventually released by Dora Dee & Lora Lee, is a nice complement. 1966's, "A Road to Nowhere," has a sophistication not heard elsewhere on this collection, and clearly points towards King's solo career.

Others singing on this collection include Gerry Goffin, Bernie Knee, and the girl-groups, The Honey Bees and The Palisades. Even stranger, the last three tracks feature co-Brill Building songsmith Barry Mann singing songs that seem to have nothing whatsoever to do with King.

Throughout, the tape quality is very high, with performances that range from simple piano or guitar accompaniment to full arrangements. Though this isn't the treasure chest of demos that make up Goffin & King's popularly known ouvre, what's here is an amazing peek inside the creative process of the Brill Building.