The brother and sister duo, The Carpenters, were born in New Haven, Connecticut, Richard in 1946 and Karen in 1950. In 1963, when they were seventeen and thirteen, respectively, the family moved to Downey, California. Richard became interested in music at a young age. His father had an extensive record collection (music from the Forties and Fifties) and Richard would sit for hours listening to the records. He started taking piano lessons when he was twelve and even before they moved west, he was playing in public with a small band.

Being almost four years older than Karen, he graduated from high school first and attended California State College in Long Beach. He sang in the choir and became friends with a fellow named Wes Jacobs. Karen, meanwhile was in high school and wanted to join the school band. But, she needed to play an instrument in order to do that. She wanted to play the drums, and when the band director told her girls do not play drums, that was all the motivation she needed. She decided she would learn to play the drums and she did. Her father bought her a drum kit and she loved it immediately.

At some point, Karen graduated and her and Richard and their friend Wes Jacobs formed a trio, playing jazz music around the Downey area. In 1966, they entered a Battle of the Bands at the Hollywood bowl and played “The Girl From Ipanema,” which won them first prize in the contest. This brought them to the attention of Neely Plumb who was an A&R man from RCA Records. He offered them a recording contract.

The next four years, they tried to break into the charts, recording music, but since their style was closer to jazz, nothing happened with any of it. Finally, RCA dropped them and Wes Jacobs left to go to New York to Julliard to seriously study music. He ended up playing with the Detroit Symphony.

Back in California, Richard and Karen kept trying, with Karen taking over the vocal duties. They recorded demos until finally a friend gave one of the demos to Herb Albert who was half of A&M Records. Herb liked Karen’s voice and the Carpenters were signed to A&M.

“(They Long to Be) Close to You” was written in 1963 by the famous writing team of Burt Bacharach and Hal David. It was first recorded and released by Richard Chamberlain, but did not become a hit. That first version did not have parentheses, just being called “They Long to Be Close to You.” Then it was covered by Dionne Warwick but that wasn’t a hit either. So, Herb Alpert gave the song to Richard and told him “See what you can do with it.” Richard arranged the song a little differently than it had been done before and the pair recorded it. It was the Carpenters breakout hit.

“(They Long to Be) Close to You” entered the pop charts on June 27, 1970 and spent four weeks at number one, becoming the second best selling record of 1970.