Now and Then (The Carpenters album)

Background

As an outgrowth of the Rick Nelson Garden Party incident, an oldies revival occurred in pop music around 1973, so Side "B" of the album featured an oldies medley. The medley starts with the Carpenters' original song "Yesterday Once More". Tony Peluso, the Carpenters' guitarist who made his debut on their 1972 album A Song For You, is heard as a radio DJ throughout the medley, which includes such songs as "The End of the World", "Dead Man's Curve", "Johnny Angel", and "One Fine Day". Peluso would also be heard as a DJ on the Carpenters' "Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft" recording in 1977.

The Now & Then album also featured Mark Rudolph, a cousin of the Carpenters, on the "Guess the Golden Goodies Group Contest", as the listener who calls in. This is also one of only two albums where Karen did most or all of the drumming - the other being Offering (later rereleased as Ticket to Ride) - although on this album, she plays all of the drum tracks with the exception of Jambalaya (On the Bayou), which had Los Angeles session drummer Hal Blaine on the drums.

Cover

The LP album featured a three-panel cover that folded out, showing a panoramic view of Karen and Richard Carpenter driving past the Carpenter family home on Newville Avenue in Downey, California. The car pictured on the cover was a 1973 Ferrari 365 GTB/4 ("Daytona") owned by Richard. (Richard later sold the original red Ferrari featured on the album cover, but bought another car of the same type in 1995.)

In February 2008, fans created a worldwide awareness campaign of the impending demolition of the Now & Then Carpenter house which had been made famous on the album cover and became a tourist destination. The home's owners, the Parras, who had purchased it in 1997 from Richard Carpenter, after his mother's death in 1996, had had enough of devotees turning up at the house and asking to be shown round, and they wanted to raze the main house. The five-bedroom house had been bought by Karen and Richard for their parents in 1970. It was an annex to the now-destroyed house in which Karen collapsed from the heart attack that killed her in 1983.

Track listing

1. "Sing" (Joe Raposo) – 3:20
2. "This Masquerade" (Leon Russell) – 4:50
3. "Heather" (Johnny Pearson) – 2:47
4. "Jambalaya (On the Bayou)" (Hank Williams) – 3:40
5. "I Can't Make Music" (Randy Edelman) – 3:17

6. "Yesterday Once More" (John Bettis, Richard Carpenter) – 3:50 (Total time – 18:05)
   1. "Fun, Fun, Fun" (Brian Wilson, Mike Love) – 1:32
   2. "The End of the World" (Arthur Kent, Sylvia Dee) – 2:25
   3. "Da Doo Ron Ron (When He Walked Me Home)" (Ellie Greenwich, Jeff Barry, Phil Spector) – 1:43
   4. "Dead Man's Curve" (Jan Berry, Roger Christian, Brian Wilson, Artie Kornfeld) – 1:40
   5. "Johnny Angel" (Lyn Duddy, Lee Pockriss) – 1:30
   6. "The Night Has a Thousand Eyes" (Benjamin Weisman, Dorothy Wayne, Marilynn Garrett) – 1:45
   7. "Our Day Will Come" (Bob Hilliard, Mort Garson) – 2:00
   8. "One Fine Day" (Carole King, Gerry Goffin) – 1:40
7. "Yesterday Once More" (reprise) – 0:58

On CD issues of the album, the "oldies" covers are split off onto a separate track from "Yesterday Once More" and labeled as "Medley".

Personnel

"Sing"

"Yesterday Once More"

"Jambalaya (On the Bayou)"

"This Masquerade"

Now & Then