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Carole King Klein (born Carol Joan Klein; February 9, 1942) is an American singer-songwriter and musician who has been active since 1958. One of the most successful female songwriters of the latter half of the 20th century in the US, she wrote or co-wrote 118 pop hits on the Billboard Hot 100. She also wrote 61 hits that charted in the UK, making her the most successful female songwriter on the UK singles charts between 1962 and 2005. King's major success began in the 1960s when she and her first husband, Gerry Goffin, wrote more than two dozen chart hits, many of which have become standards, for numerous artists. She has continued writing for other artists since then. King's success as a performer in her own right did not come until the 1970s, when she sang her own songs, accompanying herself on the piano, in a series of albums and concerts. After experiencing commercial disappointment with her debut album Writer, King scored her breakthrough with the album Tapestry, which topped the U.S. album chart for 15 weeks in 1971 and remained on the charts for more than six years. King has made 25 solo albums, the most successful being Tapestry, which held the record for most weeks at No. 1 by a female artist for more than 20 years. Her record sales were estimated at more than 75 million copies worldwide. She has won four Grammy Awards and was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame. She has been inducted twice into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, as a performer and songwriter. She is the recipient of the 2013 Library of Congress Gershwin Prize for Popular Song, the first woman to be so honored. She is also a 2015 Kennedy Center Honoree. Early life and education King was born Carol Joan Klein on February 9, 1942, in Manhattan, New York City, to Jewish parents Eugenia (née Cammer), a teacher, and Sidney N. Klein, a firefighter. King's parents met in an elevator in 1936 at Brooklyn College, where her father was a chemistry major and her mother was an English and drama major.: 10  They married in 1937 during the last years of the Great Depression.: 10  King's mother dropped out of college to run the household; her father also quit college and briefly took a job as a radio announcer.: 10  With the economy struggling, he then took a more secure job as a firefighter.: 10  After King was born, her parents remained in Brooklyn and were eventually able to buy a small two-story duplex where they could rent out the upstairs for income. King's mother had learned to play piano as a child, and after buying a piano, would sometimes practice. When King developed an insatiable curiosity about music from the time she was about three, her mother began teaching her basic piano skills, without giving her actual lessons.: 14  When King was four, her parents discovered she had absolute pitch, which enabled her to name a note correctly just by hearing it.: 14  King's father enjoyed showing off his daughter's skill to visiting friends: "My dad's smile was so broad that it encompassed the lower half of his face. I enjoyed making my father happy and getting the notes right.": 15  King's mother began giving her real music lessons when she was four: 16  with King climbing the stool, made higher still by a phone book. With her mother sitting beside her, King learned music theory and elementary piano technique, including how to read notation and execute proper note timing. King wanted to learn as much as possible: "My mother never forced me to practice. She didn't have to. I wanted so much to master the popular songs that poured out of the radio.": 16  King began kindergarten when she was four, and after her first year she was promoted directly to second grade, showing an exceptional facility with words and numbers.: 16  In the 1950s, she went to James Madison High School. She formed a band called the Co-Sines, changed her name from Carol Klein to Carole King, and made demo records with her friend Paul Simon for $25 a session. Her first official recording was the promotional single "The Right Girl", released by ABC-Paramount in 1958, which she wrote and sang to an arrangement by Don Costa. King attended Queens College, where she met Gerry Goffin, who was to become her songwriting partner. When she was 17, they married in a Jewish ceremony on Long Island in August 1959 after King became pregnant with her first daughter, Louise. They quit college and took day jobs, Goffin working as an assistant chemist and King as a secretary. They wrote songs together in the evening. Neil Sedaka, who had dated King when he was still in high school, had a hit in 1959 with "Oh! Carol". Goffin took the tune and wrote the playful response, "Oh! Neil", which King recorded and released as a single the same year. The B-side contained the Goffin-King song "A Very Special Boy". The single was not a success. After writing the Shirelles' 1960 Billboard No. 1 hit "Will You Love Me Tomorrow" – the first No. 1 by a black girl group – Goffin and King gave up their daytime jobs to concentrate on writing. "Will You Love Me Tomorrow" became a pop standard. Career 1960s In the 1960s, with King composing the music and Goffin writing the lyrics, the two 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" (later recorded by the Beatles), "The Loco-Motion", "Keep Your Hands off My Baby" (both for their babysitter Little Eva), and "It Might as Well Rain Until September" which King recorded herself in 1962 — her first success, which charted at 22 in the US and 3 in the UK (where it was her all-time greatest hit). King recorded a few follow-up singles in the wake of "September", with none charting particularly well; by 1966, her already sporadic recording career was entirely abandoned – albeit temporarily. Other songs of King's early period (through 1967) include "Half Way To Paradise" for Tony Orlando (recorded by Billy Fury in the UK), "Take Good Care of My Baby" for Bobby Vee, "Up on the Roof" for the Drifters, "I'm into Something Good" for Earl-Jean (later recorded by Herman's Hermits), "One Fine Day" for the Chiffons, and "Pleasant Valley Sunday" for the Monkees (inspired by their move to suburban West Orange, New Jersey), and the classic "(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman" for Aretha Franklin. The duo wrote several songs recorded by Dusty Springfield, including "Goin' Back" and "Some of Your Lovin'". They wrote at 1650 Broadway, alongside other songwriters associated with the Brill Building Sound. By 1968, Goffin and King were divorced and not keeping in-contact. King moved to Laurel Canyon, Los Angeles, with her two daughters, and reactivated her recording career by forming "The City", a music trio consisting of bassist Charles Larkey (her future husband) and Danny Kortchmar on guitar and vocals, with King herself on piano and vocals. The City produced one album, Now That Everything's .... Discover the Jennifer Carole Lewis popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Jennifer Carole Lewis books.