80 years ago – to be more precise, on February 9, 1942 – the world welcomed a future music icon – legendary singer, songwriter, and musician Carole King. This year King shared her very first Golden Globe nomination with the Golden Globe winner Jennifer Hudson and Jamie Hartman for Here I Am (Singing My Way Home), the sole original song featured in the Aretha Franklin biopic Respect. Interestingly, Carole King’s own connection with Aretha Franklin started 55 years ago when King co-wrote (You Make Me Feel Like) a Natural Woman – a song that climbed to No. 8 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1967 and became one of the Queen of Soul’s signature classics.

One of the most influential songwriters of our time, Carol Joan Klein was born in New York City to the loving couple Eugenia Cammer and Sidney N. Klein. According to the family legend, King’s parents had met in an elevator in 1936 at Brooklyn College where Sidney was a chemistry major, and Eugenia was an English and drama major. Their decision to get married during the last years of the Great Depression took a toll on the newlyweds in that they both dropped out of college. Eugenia ran the household, and Sidney started working as a radio announcer but quit for the more financially secure job of firefighter.

Carol’s love of music became obvious in her very early childhood: she was only three when her mother started teaching her basic piano skills, and a year later her parents realized that their four-year-old daughter was gifted with perfect pitch. That was the turning point: Carol’s mother started giving her serious music lessons, covering both musical theory and elementary piano technique.

The years rolled by, and Carol’s interest in music became even stronger. Soon after she turned sixteen, she formed her first music band, and after changing her name from Carol Klein to Carole King, she released her very first official recording –The  Right Girl – that became a statement for her entire future career. 

King met her first husband, Gerry Goffin, at Queens College: the couple married in 1959, and as her parents had done before, they both quit college to take day jobs: Goffin worked as an assistant chemist and King as a secretary. Although their marriage didn’t last long, King and Goffin became lifelong songwriting partners. In the beginning, they only had time to write songs at night, but when their song Will You Love Me Tomorrow for The Shirelles became No. 1 in Billboard’s Hot 100, the future songwriting dream team gave up their daytime jobs to focus on writing.

During the sixties, with King composing the music and Goffin writing the lyrics, this duo was the songwriting team behind Don Kirshner’s Dimension Records, which produced songs for a variety of artists, including such hits as Chains (later recorded by the Beatles) and The Loco-Motion. In 1962, King recorded her first hit, It Might As Well Rain Until September , although her real success as a performer did not come until the 1970s, when she began to sing her own songs accompanying herself on the piano.

After divorcing Goffin, King made a dramatic move: she relocated to Los Angeles, where she lived in Laurel Canyon with her two daughters and relaunched her recording career in California with The City, a music trio with King’s future husband Charles Larkey on bass, Danny Kortchmar on guitar and vocals and King on piano and vocals. Their first and only album, Now That Everything’s Been Said, was released in 1968, but, largely because of King’s reluctance to perform live, The City was disbanded in 1969. 

Although King released her first solo album, Writer, in 1970, which was followed by her collaboration with B.B. King, real fame found her only after she recorded Tapestry, her second album, in 1971: this made her a global superstar and broke records around the world. Tapestry held the No. 1 spot for 15 consecutive weeks, remained on the charts for nearly six years, has sold over 25 million copies worldwide and garnered four Grammy Awards, making King the first woman ever to win the Song of the Year Award for the single You’ve Got a Friend. 

In a career that has lasted for sixty-four years to date, King has made 25 solo albums, the most successful being Tapestry, which for more than 20 years held the record for most weeks at No. 1 by a female artist. Her total record sales have been estimated at more than 75 million copies worldwide. King has won four Grammy Awards and has been inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame; she has been inducted twice into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, once as a performer and once as a songwriter. In 2012, she received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and became the first woman to be named the recipient of the Gershwin Prize for Popular Songs – the distinction given to songwriters for a body of work.

King has written hits for Barbra Streisand, The Carpenters, Celine Dion, Gloria Estefan, The Crusaders, Steven Tyler and many more. She is also the most successful female songwriter of the latter half of the 20th century in the USA, having written or co-written 118 pop hits that have reached Billboard’s Hot 100.

Having spent a major part of her life in close proximity to Hollywood, it is surprising that King has not been more often involved in films. In 1992 her song Now and Forever featured in the opening credits to A League of Their Own, a movie directed by the three times Golden Globe nominee Penny Marshall and starring the Golden Globe winners Tom Hanks and Geena Davis. The song was nominated for a Grammy Award, and King herself has also appeared occasionally in acting roles.

In 1975 she was the speaking and singing voice of the title character in Really Rosie, an animated TV special based on the works of Maurice Sendak. In the same year she appeared on The Mary Tyler Moore Show in the episode Anyone Who Hates Kids and Dogs. Ten years later she starred alongside Golden Globe winners Tatum O’Neal and John Lithgow in the Fairie Tale Theatre episode Goldilocks and the Three Bears. 

In 1988, King starred in the off-Broadway production A Minor Incident, and in 1994 she appeared in Blood Brothers on Broadway. She has also made three appearances as guest star on the TV series Gilmore Girls. Her song Where You Lead (I Will Follow) was also the theme song to the series, in a version she sang with her daughter Louise Goffin. King reprised the acting role of music store owner Sophie Bloom in the 2016 Gilmore Girls revival by Netflix. 

In 2012, King’s autobiography A Natural Woman: A Memoir climbed to No.6 in The New York Times best seller list. In 2014, a musical version of her life and career titled Beautiful opened at the Stephen Sondheim Theatre and continued to entertain audiences until it closed in 2019. Jessie Mueller won the Tony Award for the Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role in a Musical for her portrayal of King in 2014. 

Although Carole King declared a pause in her music career in 2012, last year she entered her first collaboration with Grammy Award and Golden Globe winner Jennifer Hudson, co-writing Here I Am (Singing My Way Home). The song featured in Respect, starring Jennifer Hudson as Aretha Franklin, which was released in June 2021. It is a stunning tribute to Aretha Franklin and plays during the end credits of the movie.  Aretha Franklin’s 1967 career-defining cover of (You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman by Carole King is included on the Respect soundtrack.  

Carole King said of the collaboration: “Writing a song with Jamie Hartman and Jennifer Hudson felt both familiar and fresh at the same time.  The process of songwriting continues to amaze me.  One minute there is nothing, and then a song grows out of the seed of an idea”. 

Join us in wishing Happy 80th Birthday to Carole King!