Unrecorded and Unreleased

[Rick Henry]

There are several songs which Carpenters/Karen Carpenter were commissioned to record but never did. I can think of two right off the top of my head. "Box Office Movie King" written by Palma Pascale was commissioned to be recorded during the sessions for "A Kind Of Hush" in 1976. This song has never shown up anywhere nor has it ever been mentioned by Carpenters anywhere. First time we heard about it was during my interviews with Pascale. I'm not sure what happened with the song, maybe Carpenters forgot about the song or could have possibly felt it was not strong enough material for a Carpenters album... who knows... but the song has never surfaced.

The second is one that really intrigues me which is "Room At The Top" written by Russell Javors. This one intrigues me particularly because I am a big fan of Javors' work. Javors sent me a CD with his recordings of the four songs which Karen was commissioned to record for her solo album. She ended up recording three of them and two of the made the album... The songs of course are "All Because Of You", "Still In Love With You", "It's Really You" and "Room At The Top". What really stumps me is why Karen didn't record "Room At The Top" as this one seemed to fit her general style best of all four songs. And maybe that's why she didn't record it because it was too similar to the Carpenters sound everybody expected of her. "Room At The Top" is a great upbeat pop tune. Another reason I thought is that she had already recorded three Javors tunes and decided not to record yet a fourth.

Can anybody think of any other songs that were commissioned for recording but never happened?

Any other thoughts on this topic?

[enigma]

I believe Basket Case and Church Choir were in the tenative stages for recording and given A&M catalogue numbers but its a mystery as to if there was even one lyric written for these titles it is also rumored that Karen was starting to write some songs during the solo record whether she ever intended to record them or ever got around to writing them is another Carpenters mystery but when I heard this I always wondered if Karen ever attempted to write a song in her career it would have been interesting to see what she would write as a song if she ever wrote a song. Its Hard to collaberate any of this however so its a mystery like Pascales song.

[Rick Henry]

Mar 4, 2009 12:48:15 GMT -5 enigma said:

I believe Basket Case and Church Choir were in the tenative stages for recording and given A&M catalogue numbers but its a mystery as to if there was even one lyric written for these titles it is also rumored that Karen was starting to write some songs during the solo record whether she ever intended to record them or ever got around to writing them is another Carpenters mystery but when I heard this I always wondered if Karen ever attempted to write a song in her career it would have been interesting to see what she would write as a song if she ever wrote a song. Its Hard to collaberate any of this however so its a mystery like Pascales song.

Oh yes the famed "Basket Case" and "Church Choir"... I forgot about thost two. Yes, the songs were actually given a catalog number... but have never shown up anywhere.

As for songwriting I do know that Karen rewrote a line in the song "Guess I Just Lost My Head".

Rob Mounsey (writer of "Guess I Just Lost My Head") said, "I was so happy that she wanted to do my song... The only problem was that it was really a man's song to sing to a woman... The second line was "I was only watching the flower in your hair..." Not being a congenital lyricist I was stumped for a substitute line, and it was Karen who came up with "only trying to memorize you there."

I think Karen would have written some pretty good songs... some that she could really relate to. I would have really loved to hear what she would have written.

[kenny]

I have heard that Basket Case & Church Choir (Wild) do not exist.