Carole King

Carole King biography

Carole King (born February 9, 1942) is an American singer, songwriter, and pianist. King and her former husband Gerry Goffin wrote more than two dozen chart hits for numerous artists during the 1960s, many of which have become standards. As a singer, her Tapestry album topped the U.S. album chart for 15 weeks in 1971, and remained on the charts for more than six years.

She was most successful as a performer in the first half of the 1970s, although she was a successful songwriter long before and long after. She had her first number 1 hit as a songwriter in 1961 at age 18, with "Will You Love Me Tomorrow", which she wrote with Goffin. In 1997, she co-wrote "The Reason" for Aerosmith, but instead it was sung by Celine Dion.

In 2000, Joel Whitburn, a Billboard Magazine pop music researcher, named her the most successful female songwriter of 1955-99, because she wrote or co-wrote 118 pop hits on the Billboard Hot 100.

King has made 25 solo albums, the most successful being Tapestry. Her most recent non-compilation album is Live at the Troubadour, a collaboration with James Taylor, which reached number 4 on the charts in its first week, and has sold over 600,000 copies.

She has won four Grammy Awards and was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame for her songwriting. In 2009, Carole King was inducted into the "Hit Parade" Hall of Fame. Her album Tapestry once held the record for the longest time an album by a solo female artist remained at number one until it was first broken by Whitney Houston for the album The Bodyguard, and later by Adele for the album 21.

Early life

Born Carol Joan Klein (she added the "e" to her first name) in 1942 to a Jewish family in Manhattan, New York City, King grew up in Brooklyn. She learned the piano, then began singing with a vocal quartet called the Co-Sines at James Madison High School. As a teenager dreaming of having a successful entertainment career, she decided to give herself a new last name (but only for her stage name), stumbling upon "King" in a telephone directory. She attended Queens College, where she was a classmate (and girlfriend) of Neil Sedaka and inspired Sedaka's second hit, "Oh! Carol". She responded with "Oh! Neil". At Queens College, she befriended Paul Simon and Gerry Goffin. She later married Goffin and they had two daughters.

Goffin and King formed a songwriting partnership for Aldon Music at 1650 Broadway in New York. Their first success was "Will You Love Me Tomorrow", recorded by The Shirelles. It topped the American charts in 1961, becoming the first No.1 hit by a girl group. It was later recorded by Linda Ronstadt, Ben E. King, Dusty Springfield, Laura Branigan, Little Eva, Roberta Flack, The Four Seasons, Bryan Ferry, Dave Mason, Dionne Warwick, and Melanie Safka as well as by King herself, and Amy Winehouse.

While dating Goffin in high school, King became pregnant at the age of 17. Upon coming to her parents with the news of her pregnancy, they decided it was best for King and Goffin to get married as soon as possible. On August 30, 1959, Goffin and then 17-year-old King married in a Jewish ceremony on Long Island. King gave birth to Louise Goffin shortly afterwards and would eventually go on to have another child, Sherry Goffin. Both Louise and Sherry are musicians.

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