Close To You (The Carpenters Album)
''Close to You'' is the second studio album by American duo Carpenters, released on August 19, 1970. In 2003, the album was ranked number 175 on ''Rolling Stone''s list of the 500 greatest albums of all time, maintaining the rating in a 2012 revised list. The album contains the hit singles "(They Long to Be) Close to You" and "We've Only Just Begun". The former was the song which earned the Carpenters an international reputation. The album topped the Canadian Albums Chart and peaked at number 2 on the US ''Billboard'' albums chart. It was also successful in the United Kingdom, entering the top 50 of the official chart for 76 weeks during the first half of the 1970s. The album and its singles earned Carpenters eight Grammy Award nominations including Album of the Year, Song of the Year, Record of the Year. It won the Best New Artist and Best Contemporary Vocal Performance by a Duo, Group or Chorus for the album. Background and song information Drummer Hal Blaine reported that ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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The Carpenters
The Carpenters (officially known as Carpenters) were an American vocal and instrumental duo consisting of siblings Karen Carpenter, Karen (1950–1983) and Richard Carpenter (musician), Richard Carpenter (born 1946). They produced a distinct, soft, musical style, combining Karen's contralto vocals with Richard's harmonizing, arranging, and composition skills. During their 14-year career, the Carpenters recorded 10 albums along with numerous singles and several television specials. The siblings were born in New Haven, Connecticut, and moved to Downey, California, in 1963. Richard took piano lessons as a child, progressing to California State University, Long Beach, while Karen learned the drums. They first performed together as a duo in 1965 and formed the jazz-oriented Richard Carpenter Trio followed by the Middle of the road (music), middle-of-the-road group Spectrum. Signing as Carpenters to A&M Records in 1969, they achieved major success the following year with the hit si ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Grammy Award
The Grammy Awards (stylized as GRAMMY), or simply known as the Grammys, are awards presented by the Recording Academy of the United States to recognize "outstanding" achievements in the music industry. They are regarded by many as the most prestigious, significant awards in the music industry worldwide. It was originally called the Gramophone Awards, as the trophy depicts a gilded Phonograph, gramophone. The Grammys are the first of the Big Three television networks, Big Three networks' major music awards held annually, and is considered one of the EGOT, four major annual American entertainment awards, alongside the Academy Awards (for films), the Emmy Awards (for television), and the Tony Awards (for theater). The 1st Annual Grammy Awards, first Grammy Awards ceremony was held on May 4, 1959, to honor the musical accomplishments of performers for the year 1958. After the 2011 ceremony, the Recording Academy overhauled many Grammy Award categories for 2012. History The Grammys ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Tim Hardin
James Timothy Hardin (December 23, 1941 – December 29, 1980) was an American folk and blues musician and composer. As well as releasing his own material, several of his songs, including " If I Were a Carpenter" and "Reason to Believe", became hits for other artists. Hardin grew up in Oregon and joined the Marine Corps. He started his music career in Greenwich Village which led to recording several albums in the mid- to late 1960s, and a performance at the Woodstock Festival. Hardin struggled with drug abuse throughout most of his adult life, and live performances were sometimes erratic. He was planning a comeback when he died in late 1980 from a heroin overdose. Early life and career Hardin was born in Eugene, Oregon to parents who both had musical training. His mother, Molly Small Hardin, was an accomplished violinist who performed with the Portland Symphony Orchestra and his father played in jazz bands. He attended South Eugene High School but dropped out at age 18 to jo ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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John Bettis
John Gregory Bettis (born October 24, 1946) is an American lyricist. He was originally part of the band Spectrum, which also featured Richard and Karen Carpenter. He wrote the lyrics for " Top of the World", a hit for both Lynn Anderson and The Carpenters. He wrote several more hits for The Carpenters, including " Only Yesterday", "Goodbye to Love" and " Yesterday Once More". He later wrote hits for other artists including Madonna (" Crazy for You"), Michael Jackson ("Human Nature"), The Pointer Sisters ("Slow Hand"), Diana Ross ("When You Tell Me That You Love Me"), Jennifer Warnes ("Nights Are Forever"), Peabo Bryson ("Can You Stop the Rain"), George Strait ("Heartland"), Ronnie Milsap (" Only One Love in My Life"), and Barbara Mandrell (" One of a Kind Pair of Fools"). 38 Special (" Like No Other Night") New Kids on the Block ("If You Go Away") Barbra Streisand (" Sweet Forgiveness") Whitney Houston ("One Moment in Time") He has been nominated four times and won two Emmy Aw ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Ralph Carmichael
Ralph Carmichael (May 27, 1927 – October 18, 2021) was an American composer and arranger of both secular pop music and contemporary Christian music. He is regarded as one of the pioneers of contemporary Christian music. Early Life and Career Carmichael was born in Quincy, Illinois, the son of a Pentecostal minister. As a teenager, Carmichael played violin with the San Jose Civic Symphony. At seventeen, he enrolled at Southern California Bible College (now Vanguard University) to become a preacher like his father, grandfather, three uncles and five cousins. He started a campus men's quartet as well as ensembles and mixed groups of all kinds, blending jazz and classical music techniques with gospel songs and hymns. His bands were unwelcomed at many churches, and he was not allowed to store his baritone saxophone on campus because of its associations with big band music. After college, Carmichael's band received mixed reactions from the Christian community. One church asked that ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Roger Nichols (songwriter)
Roger Stewart Nichols (born September 17, 1940) is an American composer and songwriter. He is a multi-instrumentalist who plays violin, guitar, bass, and piano. Career Nichols co-wrote many songs with lyricists Paul Williams, Tony Asher, and Bill Lane. Asher and Nichols co-wrote several songs on Nichols' debut album ''Roger Nichols and the Small Circle of Friends'' (A&M Records, 1968) which was produced by Tommy LiPuma, engineered by Bruce Botnick, and featured session contributions from Van Dyke Parks, Randy Newman and Lenny Waronker. Although the album was not a big seller, A&M co-owner Herb Alpert recommended that Nichols be hired by A&M publishing as a staff songwriter, and it was during this period that he was introduced to Paul Williams. Nichols' collaborations with Paul Williams include "We've Only Just Begun" (performed by The Carpenters), which was originally written for a Crocker Bank commercial. They were commissioned to write a jingle after a bank executive hear ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Crocker National Bank
Crocker National Bank was a United States bank headquartered in San Francisco, California. It was acquired by and merged into Wells Fargo Bank in 1986. History The bank traces its history to the Woolworth National Bank in San Francisco. Charles Crocker, who was one of The Big Four of the Central Pacific Railroad and who constructed America's First transcontinental railroad, acquired a controlling interest in Woolworth for his son William Henry Crocker. The bank was renamed Crocker Woolworth National Bank, later Crocker National Bank. Crocker National merged with the First National Bank of San Francisco, founded by James D. Phelan, in 1925 to form Crocker First National Bank. In 1956, Crocker First National Bank merged with the Anglo California National Bank (established by Herbert Fleishhacker) to form Crocker-Anglo Bank. In 1963, Crocker-Anglo Bank later merged with Los Angeles' Citizens National Bank, to become Crocker-Citizens Bank. and later, Crocker Bank. In the 1970s a ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Hal David
Harold Lane David (May 25, 1921 – September 1, 2012) was an American lyricist. He grew up in New York City. He was best known for his collaborations with composer Burt Bacharach and his association with Dionne Warwick. Early life David was born in New York City, a son of Austrian Jewish immigrants Lina (née Goldberg) and Gedalier David, who owned a delicatessen in New York. He is the younger brother of American lyricist and songwriter Mack David. Career David is credited with popular music lyrics, beginning in the 1940s with material written for bandleader Sammy Kaye and for Guy Lombardo. He worked with Morty Nevins of The Three Suns on four songs for the feature film ''Two Gals and a Guy'' (1951), starring Janis Paige and Robert Alda. In 1957, David met composer Burt Bacharach at Famous Music in the Brill Building in New York. The two teamed up and wrote their first hit " The Story of My Life", recorded by Marty Robbins in 1957. Subsequently, in the 1960s and early ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Burt Bacharach
Burt Freeman Bacharach ( ; born May 12, 1928) is an American composer, songwriter, record producer and pianist who composed hundreds of pop songs from the late 1950s through the 1980s, many in collaboration with lyricist Hal David. A six-time Grammy Award winner and three-time Academy Award winner, Bacharach's songs have been recorded by more than 1,000 different artists. , he had written 73 US and 52 UK Top 40 hits. He is considered one of the most important composers of 20th-century popular music. His music is characterized by unusual chord progressions, influenced by his background in jazz harmony, and uncommon selections of instruments for small orchestras. Most of Bacharach and David's hits were written specifically for and performed by Dionne Warwick but earlier associations (from 1957 to 1963) saw the composing duo work with Marty Robbins, Perry Como, Gene McDaniels and Jerry Butler. Following the initial success of these collaborations, Bacharach went on to write hits for ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Hal Blaine
Hal Blaine (born Harold Simon Belsky; February 5, 1929 – March 11, 2019) was an American drummer and session musician, thought to be among the most recorded studio drummers in the music industry, claiming over 35,000 sessions and 6,000 singles. His drumming is featured on 150 US top 10 hits, 40 of which went to number one. Born in Holyoke, Massachusetts, Blaine moved with his family to California in 1943 and began playing jazz and big band music before taking up rock and roll session work. He became one of the regulars in Phil Spector's de facto house band, which Blaine nicknamed " the Wrecking Crew". Some of the records Blaine played on include the Ronettes' single "Be My Baby" (1963), which contained a drum beat that became widely imitated, as well as works by popular artists such as Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley, the Beach Boys, Simon & Garfunkel, the Carpenters, Neil Diamond, and the Byrds. Blaine's workload declined in the 1980s as recording and musical practices changed ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Grammy Award For Best Pop Performance By A Duo Or Group With Vocal
The Grammy Award for Best Pop Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocals was awarded between 1966 and 2011 (in its final year, it was awarded for recordings issued in 2010). The award had several minor name changes: *From 1966 to 1967, the award was known as Best Contemporary (R&R) Performance - Group (Vocal or Instrumental) *In 1968 it was awarded as Best Contemporary Group Performance (Vocal or Instrumental) *In 1969 it was awarded as Best Contemporary-Pop Performance - Vocal Duo or Group *In 1970 it was awarded as Best Contemporary Vocal Performance by a Group *In 1971 it was awarded as Best Contemporary Vocal Performance by a Duo, Group or Chorus *In 1972 it was awarded as Best Pop Vocal Performance by a Duo Or Group *From 1973 to 1977 it was awarded as Best Pop Vocal Performance by a Duo, Group or Chorus *In 1978 it was awarded as Best Pop Vocal Performance by a Group *In 1979 it was again awarded as Best Pop Vocal Performance by a Duo or Group *In 1980 it was again awarded a ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Grammy Award For Best New Artist
The Grammy Award for Best New Artist has been awarded since 1959. Years reflect the year in which the Grammy Awards were handed out, for records released in the previous year. The award was not presented in 1967. The official guidelines are as follows: "For a new artist who releases, during the Eligibility Year, the first recording which establishes the public identity of that artist." Note that this is not necessarily the first album released by an artist; for example, Shelby Lynne won the award in 2001 after having already released six albums over 13 years. The Best New Artist award has a reputation for being given to artists whose music industry success ends up being short-lived; it is sometimes asserted, with varying degrees of sincerity, that the award itself brings a curse. This viewpoint was expressed by former Starland Vocal Band member Taffy Nivert, Taffy Danoff in a 2002 interview for VH1's ''The Greatest (TV series), 100 Greatest One Hit Wonders'': "We got two of the ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |