“It’s kinda nice to be remembered by your peers and your fans,
because you can achieve a lot of success and be a creep too.
But we try to be nice, just normal people.”
Karen Carpenter
The Christmas holiday brings up lots of fond memories for me. Music plays a big part of those memories. Christmas wouldn’t be complete without listening to Christmas songs sung by Karen Carpenter.
Richard Carpenter composed the music for “Merry Christmas Darling” in 1966 when he was just 19 years old. Frank Pooler wrote the lyrics twenty years earlier, in 1946, when he also was only 19 years old. The song Pooler had written was to be a Christmas gift for his girlriend, whom he was missing while being away from her during a visit with his parents at Christmas time. However, their relationship ended before he could present it to her.
Twenty years later, Pooler was the choir director at California State University in Long Beach, when both Karen and Richard Carpenter were members of the choir. Richard and Karen were performing locally and had tired of playing the usual Christmas fare. Richard asked Pooler, their favorite professor, if he had any ideas for different Christmas songs.
Pooler remembered the Christmas song he had written many years before and mentioned it to Richard, adding that he didn’t think much of the melody anymore. Richard said he would try his hand at writing new music for the lyrics. Within about 15 minutes he was finished creating a song, written by two teenagers who were a generation apart, that was destined to become a Christmas classic.
The song was first released as a single on November 20, 1970, and earned gold record status. This song sparked the idea of a Christmas album by The Carpenters, and on October 13, 1978, “Christmas Portrait” was released with this newly recorded version of the song. Karen re-recorded her vocals for the album version as she felt that she could give the vocals a more mature treatment. This newly recorded version was presented on their TV Christmas special in 1978, as seen here, and became a hit all over again.
Shine On
