A soundtrack to the 1970s wouldn’t be complete without at least some of the songs of Karen and Richard Carpenter. Between 1971 and 1975, the sibling duo recorded 10 albums, scored 13 top 10 songs and performed more than 800 concerts.
Next week, for one night, the Carpenters will be celebrated at Walton Arts Center with the show “The Carpenters Songbook: A Live Celebration.” It was created by the same creative team responsible for “The Simon and Garfunkel Story” that appeared on the Walton Arts Center stage last year. That team is led by Dean Elliott. He says he had been nurturing this show about the Carpenters for a long time.
Elliott: You know what? I grew up, as you can probably tell by my accent, in the UK. And I remember it being sort of part of my... My mother was a huge music fan from sort of ’50s to early ’70s, I would say. That was her sort of era and her love. So I remember growing up in a room where the record player was never off. It was always on. Music was always playing.
And whether it was my mom listening to music, whether it was my sister or my brother or me or whatever, there was always music on. And that was my first real... I remember hearing “Close to You.” And obviously those first lines, [lyric from “Close to You”]. It’s just so evocative. And so that’s really my early memory of being very, very young and hearing it.
Kellams: What is it about Karen and Richard Carpenter that compelled you to stage a production?
Elliott: You know what? I had huge success with another show, which you may be aware of, called “The Simon and Garfunkel Story,” which has been running now for, gosh, 15 years worldwide. And it sort of a bit like Simon and Garfunkel. I feel like you know the songs, you love the songs, the songs remind you of a million memories. And it really is beautiful music, both of them. But not many people know the story about who they were, where they came from. Obviously, people are somewhat aware of Karen’s tragic passing.
So I just wanted to sort of give the show... Our shows, both “The Simon and Garfunkel Story” and “The Carpenters Songbook,” both sort of elevated sort of tribute shows. So they really do take you on that journey, which give you more than just the music and those beautiful songs. They give you a lot of context, a lot of the script, a lot of the stories, a lot of the reasons. And you get to know them better.
Kellams: If you’re familiar with the Carpenters’ music, you know those lush vocals, you know those lyrics. But what often got lost in contemporary times, I think it’s more understood now, is just what kind of musicians the Carpenters were.
Elliott: Oh, incredible. Yeah. And you know what? I can justify that. So I’m a huge Beatles fan, as many people are. And their song “Ticket to Ride,” which is a great song, obviously. I hadn’t ever heard the Carpenters’ version of that. I was like, “Oh, that was their first No. 1 hit. OK, great. I didn’t know that.”
And so I listened to it for the first time about, gosh, a year, year and a half ago when I started working on this project. And the opening is almost Bach-like.
(Music: “Ticket to Ride” by the Carpenters)
Elliott: It is so beautiful. Like, he was such an extraordinary composer, arranger, pianist that he made that song sound like a piece of classical music. And I encourage your listeners to relisten to the opening of that because it’s unbelievable how good. And obviously it’s well documented how much of a great drummer Karen was. Just phenomenal.
Kellams: Is there something about duos? Simon and Garfunkel, Karen and Richard Carpenter. Is there something about duos that attracts you?
Elliott: Ha! Interestingly, yes, it is, and I’m working on another duo show at the moment. I think there is... I’m a musician myself and I’m sort of compelled towards harmonies. I mentioned the Beatles. They’re not technically a duo, but the sound of sort of Paul and John, the sound of Art and Paul, the sound of Karen and Richard, the sound of... I love those harmonies. I love those lush sounds that two voices can create.
(Music: “We’ve Only Just Begun” by the Carpenters)
Kellams: These are also something... I mean, you think about Simon and Garfunkel beginning in the mid-’60s to really become popular after they were changed from Tom and Jerry. And then the Carpenters are sort of... There was a time when both of those duos were popular at the same time. Is there something about, I don’t know, the mid-’60s, the mid-’70s that you find attractive as well?
Elliott: For sure. Yeah. Like I said, going back to sort of my first answer, it brings me back straight to my living room in Great Britain with my family. That music, I always say my two favorite eras of music are the sort of late ’60s, early ’70s and the sort of mid- to late ’90s, because that was my era. I grew up through that era.
I think those two... to have grown up in either of those eras and have that music come to you firsthand is extraordinary. Like, that is extraordinary. People will talk about, in my opinion, those two eras forever. And I’m glad to have caught one of them, but this is really catching the sort of first wave of that.
Kellams: When you’re putting a project together like this with the Carpenters, you’re talking about real people who had real lives. What do you feel your responsibility is to both celebrate and honor their real lives?
Elliott: 100%. Yeah. I mean, first and foremost, we have to get the music right. We are meticulous about music. Everybody knows that Karen Carpenter’s voice is one of the most incredible voices of all time. So we do a huge search. We go over to New York and we audition a ton of Broadway performers. And the person we have is an absolute star. It hurts. Listening to her sing is worth the ticket price alone. She is incredible. So that’s really the most important thing, is the vocals.
And then I feel like secondly, when you’re dealing with people, Richard is still with us. You have to be really mindful of their story. We would never put anything in there that was subjective or in any way sort of detriment to their memory or to who they are. We keep everything very much to facts.
And we celebrate them. The shows are performed in the third person narration. So it’s like we are fans of the music and we are sharing this with you. And that’s what people really love about our shows, is the fact that they feel connected to those performances through storytelling.
Kellams: I would imagine one of the hardest things to do when putting a project like this together, say it has, I don’t know, 14 songs, is what’s the 15th song? What’s the song that you don’t get to include in your production?
Elliott: You know what? That’s a really very good question. Often we would take out a song that just doesn’t seem to fit the flow. We would never take out a huge, huge hit, obviously, but we would say a deeper cut, which pushes the narrative forward, over something that just jars. So the one in this show that we don’t do, which just we couldn’t find a place for it, it’s called “Jambalaya.” Which was... Yeah. Which, but we actually do it in our... We have an invited soundcheck, which you can get on, which we actually do it in the invited soundcheck.
But it’s just a song that everywhere we put it, we just sort of didn’t work. It would work if it was just a concert. They’d be like, “Oh, this next song is ‘Jambalaya.’” But because we’re taking people on these journeys, as I say, it just sort of didn’t work. And that’s often the reason why you take these songs out.
Dean Elliott is writer and director of “The Carpenters Songbook: A Live Celebration” that will be on stage at Walton Arts Center Thursday night, Nov. 5, at 7 p.m. Our conversation took place earlier this month.
(Music: “Jambalaya (On the Bayou)” by the Carpenters)
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