CAROLE KING Lottie Pretty

ACHIEVEMENTS

• She is the most successful female songwriter of the latter half of the 20th century in the USA.

• She has written or co-written 118 pop hits on the Billboard Hot 100 between 1955 and 1999.

• She also wrote 61 hits that charted in the UK, making her the most successful female songwriter on the
UK singles charts between 1952 and 2005.
 CHILDHOOD
• She was born Carol Joan Klein on the 9th of February 1942 in Manhattan to a Jewish family.

• Her mother was a teacher and her father was a firefighter for the New York City Fire Department.

• Her mother learnt to play piano as a child and taught Carole some very basic skills.

• When she was four years old her parents found that she had developed a sense of absolute pitch.
(being able to name a note by only hearing it)

• Her mother began giving her proper lessons and taught her music theory and elementary piano
technique.

• She also started kindergarten at four however progressed straight to second grade after a year
because she had “exceptional use of words and numbers”
 CAREER
• She met Gerry Goffin at Queens College who became her songwriting partner and they married
when she was 17 in a Jewish Ceremony in 1959.

• In the sixties, Carole would write the music and Gerry would write the lirics to songs they would
write in the evenings.

• They wrote a string of classic songs for a variety of artists.

• King and Goffin were also the songwriting team behind Don Kirshner's Dimension Records, which
produced songs including "Chains" (which the beatles covered later on ) "The Loco-Motion" for their
babysitter Little Eva, and "It Might as Well Rain Until September" which King recorded herself in
1962 which was her first hit.
• King would record a few follow-up singles in the wake of "September", but none of them sold much,
and her already sporadic recording career was entirely abandoned (however, temporarily) by
1966.
 CAREER
• In 1968, Gerry and Carole were divorced and were started to lose contact.

• Carole moved to Laurel Canyon in Los Angeles with her two daughters and awakened her recording
career by forming "The City", a music trio consisting of Charles Larkey (her future husband) on bass;
Danny Kortchmar on guitar and vocals; and herself on piano and vocals.
• The City produced one album, Now That Everything's Been Said in 1968, but Carole was reluctant to
perform live meant sales were slow.

• A change of distributors meant that the album was quickly deleted; the group broke up in 1969.

• The album was re-discovered by Classic Rock radio in the early 1980s and the cut "Snow Queen"
received nominal airplay for a few years.
 POLITICAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL ACTIVISM
• In 1977 Carole relocated to Idaho an got involved with environmental issues.

• Since 1990, she has been working with the Alliance for the Wild Rockies and other groups towards
passage of the Northern Rockies Ecosystem Protection Act (NREPA).

• She is also politically active in the United States Democratic Party and began campaigning for John
Kerry in 2003.

• In 2008 she appeared on an episode of the Colbert Report and talked about politics. She sad she
supported Hilary Clinton and urged that this was not due to her gender.

• On the 6th of October 2014 she performed at a Democratic fundraiser at the Beverly Wiltshire Hotel
in California which was attended by Joe Biden.

• On the 21st of January she marched in the 2017 Women’s March in Stanley, Idaho where she carried a
sign that said “one small voice”.

• She said she carried this message because she believed that “one small voice plus millions of other
small voices is exactly how we change the world”.
 AWARDS
• She received a Grammy Award for Song of the year “You got a friend” in 1972.

• She received a Grammy Award for Record of the year “It’s too late” in 1972.

• She received a Grammy Award for Album of the year “Tapestry” in 1972.

• A Gershwin Prize in 2013.

• A Kennedy Centre Honouree in 2015.

• Musicare’s person of the year in 2014.

• A Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Class of 1990.

SYLVIA ROBINSON Lottie Pretty
ACHIEVEMENTS
• She was called the “Mother of Hip Hop”

• She received a Pioneer Award for her career in singing and being the founder of Sugarhill Records
at the 11th Annual Rhythm and Blues Awards Gala in 2000.
CHILDHOOD
• She was born as Sylvia Vanderpool on the 29th of May in 1935 in New York City.

• Her parents were immigrants form the Virgin Islands.

• She attended Washington Irving High School however she dropped out when she was 14.

• She began to record music in 1950 for Columba Records and her name was Little Sylvia.
 CAREER
• In 1954, she began teaming up with Kentucky guitarist Mickey Baker, who then taught her how to play guitar.

• In 1956, the duo known as Mickey & Sylvia, recorded the Bo Diddley and Jody Williams Rock Single "Love Is
Strange" which topped the R&B charts and reached number eleven on the Billboard pop charts(1957).

• After several more releases Mickey & Sylvia split up in 1959 and she later married Joseph Robinson.

• Sylvia restarted her solo career shortly after her initial split from Baker, first under the name Sylvia Robbins.

• In 1961, the duo reunited and recorded more songs together for various labels including their own Willow Records
distributed by King Records of Cincinnati.

• In 1966, the Robinsons moved to New Jersey where they formed a soul music label.
 CAREER
• In 1968, the duo signed a Washington, D.C. act named The Moments, who immediately found success with "Not
on the Outside".

• Within a couple of years and with a new lineup, the group scored their biggest hit with "Love on a Two-Way
Street"(1970), which Sylvia co-wrote and produced with Bert Keyes and (uncredited) lyrics by Lezli Valentine.

• In 1972, Robinson sent a demo of a song she had written called "Pillow Talk" to Al Green. However, Green
passed on it due to his religious beliefs, So she decided to record it herself, returning to her own musical career.

• As Sylvia, the record became a major hit, reaching number-one on the R&B chart and crossing over to reach
Billboard Hot 100 (#3), while also reaching #14 in the UK at the beginning of 1973.
 CAREER
• In the 1970s, the Robinsons founded Sugar Hill Records.

• She named the company after the culturally rich Sugar Hill area of Harlem, an affluent African American
neighbourhood in Manhattan, New York City.

• The song "Rapper's Delight"(1979), performed by The Sugar Hill Gang, brought rap into the public music arena and
changed the music industry by introducing rap, scratch, and breakdance.

• Later acts signed to Sugar Hill Records included all-female rap/funk group The Sequence, featuring a teenage Angie
Stone (Angie B), who had a million-selling hit in early 1980 with "Funk U Up".

• Sugar Hill folded in 1985, due to changes in the music industry, the competition of other hip-hop labels, such as Profile
and Def Jam and also financial pressures.

• Robinson, who had by now divorced Joe Robinson, continued as a music executive, forming Bon Ami Records in 1987.
The label signed the act The New Style, who later left and found success as Naughty by Nature.