Lunch Break Video: On Richard Carpenter’s 63rd birthday, some music videos from The Carpenters

The music of The Carpenters was the soundtrack of my childhood and the day Karen Carpenter died back in 1983 was completely traumatic for me.

The only solace has been that we still have their music and no one has been better at keeping that legacy alive than Richard Carpenter who turns 63 years old today. Karen had the voice but Richard was the songwriter, the producer, the arranger.

One of the great thrills of my life was back in 1999 when my pal Frank Groff and I cornered Richard after a benefit in Long Beach that Frank had organized and talked to him for more than a half hour about the Carpenters music. He was completely engaged because Frank and I were more than casual fans. We knew B-sides, we knew album cuts. We asked questions like: “Why didn’t you release Can;’t Smile Without You as a single?” (It went on to become a big hit for Barry Manilow).

I remember also telling Richard, and I can;t believe I’m admitting this publicly, that I really loved Goofus from the A Kind of Hush album..

It was a magical evening.

Here are a few Carpenters videos. The first is a song that I bought as a single as a kid and just played it and played it: All You Get From Love Is A Love Song. I was always surprised it wasn’t a bigger hit because it’s as catchy as any of the other Carpenters hits.

My all-time faves, by the way: I Need to Be in Love, A Song for You, Goodbye to Love, Yesterday Once More, It’s Gonna Take Some Time, Rainy Days and Mondays and I Won’t Last A Day Without You.

Enjoy!

This is a fun video of the duo’s 1975 number one hit Please Mr. Postman from the Horizons album.

This final video is from the Carpenters TV special Music Music with guest stars Ella Fitzgerald and John Davidson (I had such a crush in him!).Karen is quite thin here. I remember not thinking much of it then but now it is clear that her eating disorder was in full bloom.

The duo made several TV specials and I watched every one of them, not an easy thing when you have five siblings, most of whom didn’t want to watch it. But I would not be denied! There were no VCRs, no DVRs, no YouTube then. If you missed it, you pretty much missed it forever. To make them last, I’d record them with my tape recorder. Unfortunately, some of the recordings have snide comments from some of my siblings in the background!