Little Girl Blue by Randy L. Schmidt

Author:Randy L. Schmidt
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Chicago Review Press
Published: 2010-03-24T16:00:00+00:00

AFTER A Kind of Hush it seemed that both Karen and Richard lacked the energy and determination that had shined through on their earlier efforts. It also became more difficult to write and select material radio programmers and audiences wanted. “For the last three years there has been a definite resistance to our product, and I don’t know why,” Karen explained to Radio Report in 1978. “We’ve been doing our best to turn out the finest product we can. Richard keeps changing direction. We’ve covered practically every aspect that is capable of being put to disc with the exception of classical. We haven’t done that yet.”

Experimentation, diversity, and perhaps even desperation birthed the Carpenters’ next studio album, Passage, released September 23, 1977. Billboard called it their “most boldly innovative and sophisticated undertaking yet,” pointing out that “the material constantly shifts gears from calypso, lushly orchestrated complex pop rhythms, jazz flavored ballads, reggae and melodic, upbeat numbers.”

Passage opened with the daring “B’wana She No Home,” a Michael Franks tune with a vocal arrangement by jazz great Gene Puerling, the sound architect of vocal groups including the Hi-Lo’s and the Singers Unlimited. “B’wana” was one of several songs on the album that were essentially live recordings. “When recording, we usually begin with bass, drums, piano, and build from there,” Richard explained in the album’s liner notes. “But on several of these tracks, almost the whole thing was recorded live all at once. Certain pieces call for that.”

Passage spawned the debut single “All You Get from Love Is a Love Song,” one Karen felt was a surefire hit. “We thought it was really going to make it,” she said, “but it got hardly any airplay at all.” It was a strong album cut but not nearly as strong a single as they needed at this stage. Monitoring airplay became a focus for the Carpenters more with this album than any previous. Some at A&M even began resorting to payola, meaning that payments or incentives were given in exchange for placement on playlists and prominent airplay during a given interval. Even Carpenters fans were enlisted to assist and sent gifts as tokens of appreciation for helping monitor the number of spins a particular song was seeing on a particular station.

Richard first listened to “Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft” at the urging of Tony Peluso on a 1976 album by the Canadian group Klaatu. “[He] wanted to do that more than anything in the world,” Karen recalled. “When we got done with it, it had turned into an epic. We figured out that we spent more time on ‘Occupants’ than we did our third album. That was a job. It was a masterpiece when Richard got done with it.” In addition to introducing the song to the Carpenters, Peluso reprised his role of a bemused deejay during the recording’s opening dialogue segment.

For their endeavor, Karen and Richard brought in sixty-year-old Englishman Peter Knight, whose work on the Moody Blues’ Days of Future Passed album had impressed the Carpenters nearly ten years earlier.

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