Carole King wrote hits for others for a decade, then made Tapestry
At four, Carol Klein perched on a phone book at the piano while her mother taught her to read music, and her parents discovered she had perfect pitch. By her late teens she was writing hits for other singers. Then, at 29, she recorded an album of her own that stayed on the charts for nearly six years.
King grew up in Brooklyn, the daughter of a teacher and a firefighter who had met in an elevator at Brooklyn College. She skipped a grade early on, formed a high school vocal group, renamed herself Carole King, and cut demo records with her friend Paul Simon for 25 dollars a session. At Queens College she met the lyricist Gerry Goffin; they married in 1959, when she was 17 and expecting their first daughter, and wrote songs at night after their day jobs.
Her former boyfriend Neil Sedaka had a hit that year with a song named after her, which convinced King that songwriting could pay. With his backing, she and Goffin joined the publisher Aldon Music. In 1960 the Shirelles took their Will You Love Me Tomorrow to No. 1, the first chart-topper by a Black girl group, and the couple quit their day jobs. With King writing melodies and Goffin words, they turned out classics for everyone from their babysitter Little Eva to Aretha Franklin, working among the songwriters of the Brill Building scene.
After their divorce she moved with her two daughters to Laurel Canyon in Los Angeles and fell in with James Taylor and Joni Mitchell. Her first solo album, Writer, stalled at No. 84 in 1970. The next year Tapestry spent 15 straight weeks at the top of the album chart, sold over 30 million copies and won four Grammys; King became the first woman to take Song of the Year, for You've Got a Friend, which Taylor also took to No. 1.
In 1973 she drew at least 100,000 people to a free concert in Central Park. Across her career she wrote or co-wrote 118 songs that reached the Hot 100 and became the most successful woman songwriter on the UK singles charts between 1962 and 2005. In 2013 she became the first woman awarded the Library of Congress Gershwin Prize for Popular Song.
Source: Carole King
