A Natural Woman

by Carole King

  Though Gerry and I had originally planned to wait before having children, Gerry, too, rose to the occasion. When I went into labor, he helped me into the car very carefully and made sure I had everything I would need with me. Because it would be another decade before fathers were invited to participate in deliveries, Gerry was pacing and smoking in the fathers’ waiting room when our daughter Louise Lynn Goffin was born on March 23, 1960. I was allowed to hold Louise for less than a minute before a nurse took her away to clean her up, swaddle her in a pink blanket, and tuck her in a bassinet in the nursery far from her germy mother. Another nurse brought Gerry to the hallway outside the nursery so he could view his new baby through a window. When at last my nurse allowed him in to see his wife and daughter during one of Louise’s allotted visits to my room, Gerry was profoundly moved. He kept telling me how beautiful Louise was, how much he loved her, how much he loved me, and what a good father he was going to be.

  Seeing Gerry’s eyes shining with such a strong commitment to love his family and keep us safe, I fell in love with him all over again.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Cubicles

  As a child I had imagined, erroneously, that Tin Pan Alley was a physical alley next to the Brill Building. Both were symbols of music publishing in the twentieth century, which is probably why so many people think, erroneously, that Gerry and I wrote in the Brill Building. But we didn’t. The Brill Building was at 1619 Broadway. The building that housed Aldon Music was 1650 Broadway. With a logic peculiar to Manhattan, the entrance to 1650 Broadway was on West 51st Street. (New York Real Estate 101: why use a street address when you can charge higher rent with a Broadway address?)

  At first, when we drove to Aldon from Brooklyn, we parked in the outdoor parking lot across the street. We had to find another location when the one-story lot became a twenty-two-story Sheraton hotel. (New York Real Estate 102: why maintain a business on one level when you can make so much more money renting space on twenty-two floors?)

  Crossing the street we invariably passed a man whom local vendors called “Larry Sick-Sick.” Homeless and mentally ill, Larry was never far from the entrance to 1650. We never knew his last name, and someone other than he must have told us his first name, because we never heard him utter anything but the one word he hissed repeatedly whenever anyone walked by: “Sick-sick-sick-sick-sick-sick-sick!”

  Another local character was Moondog, an imposing figure often seen outside the Warwick Hotel on Sixth Avenue and 54th Street. Sometimes he stood on the corner of Broadway and 51st Street. His form of mental illness compelled him to stand on a corner in the same upright position all day. He wore a blanket and big leather boots and held a long wooden staff. I never heard Moondog speak. In fact, I never saw him do anything other than stand upright with his long wooden staff through rain, snow, sleet, heat, and fine weather. Though I never saw Larry or Moondog soliciting money or food, some kindly souls must have made sure they had enough to eat. To most passersby, including young and naïve me, Moondog and Larry Sick-Sick were two among many odd citizens among the eight million residents of the Big Apple.

  Aldon Music has been described as boot camp for songwriters. That it was. And yes, we did write in cubicles. The cubicles were the source of the cacophony I’d heard when I first visited the office. Each was barely big enough to contain an upright piano with a bench, a chair for the lyricist, and a small table with enough room for a legal pad, a pen, an ashtray, and a coffee cup. The proximity of each cubicle to the next added an “echo” factor. While I was playing the song on which Gerry and I were working, we heard only our song. As soon as I stopped playing we could hear the song on which the team in the next cubicle was working. Not surprisingly, with each of us trying to write the follow-up to an artist’s current hit, everyone’s song sounded similar to everyone else’s. But only one would be chosen. Inevitably the insecurity of the writers and the competitive atmosphere fostered by Donnie spurred each team on to greater effort, which resulted in better songs. It wasn’t only about writing a great song; it was about winning.

  Though Gerry and I typically wrote together at home after dinner, sometimes he’d call in sick to his day job and we’d write in a cubicle while the secretaries fussed over Louise. Gerry, in particular, thrived on being where the action was. I didn’t realize at the time that we were the action. By “we,” I mean the Aldon songwriters. I don’t believe any of us knew then how much influence we would have on popular music.

  Vital to that influence were the musicians and background singers who performed on our demos. One night we were listening to a playback when Gerry happened to mention that we were looking for female background singers. The engineer suggested three young black women from Brooklyn known collectively as the Cookies. Dorothy Jones, Margaret Ross, and Earl-Jean McCree had a near-perfect vocal blend. After a number of our demos became masters and then hits, the Cookies were heard around the world. Among their hits were “Girls Grow Up Faster Than Boys,” “Don’t Say Nothin’ Bad About My Baby,” and, most famously, “Chains.” Other records featuring Tony Orlando and Neil Sedaka on which the Cookies sang also became hits. Sometimes they were in the studio with Aldon writers from midmorning to the wee hours.

  One night Gerry, Dorothy, Margaret, Earl-Jean, and I emerged from a demo session at 3 a.m. onto an almost deserted Broadway. Apart from a few hookers and johns, we seemed to be the only people around. While the Cookies and I waited for Gerry to get the car, we were approached by several different vehicles containing men inquiring about everything from a single to a five- or six-some. Thankfully, Gerry pulled up and whisked us all back to Brooklyn, leaving the potential johns to wonder what he had that they didn’t.

  What he had was a wife and a baby daughter to support. He also had a mother-in-law who lived too far away to babysit on a moment’s notice. My participation in late-night demo sessions was possible only when Grandma Sarah, who lived nearby, could watch Louise. My grandmother couldn’t understand how anyone could earn a living writing songs that appealed to teenagers, but that’s exactly what Gerry and I were doing. Though now in his twenties, Gerry hadn’t forgotten which three-letter word was foremost in the mind of every teen. It was s-e-x that kids thought about when they listened to lyrics about hearts full of love, hearts breaking, lovers longing, youth yearning, cars, stars, the moon, the sun, and that most innocent of all physical pastimes: dancing.

  We wouldn’t write a song about dancing until the following year, but sex was definitely the implied third character in our first big hit.

  Chapter Twenty

  Will You Love Me Tomorrow

  Donnie was not without idiosyncrasies. He was deathly afraid to drive, and he refused to fly. It was rare to receive his full attention except when follow-ups or chart positions were a topic of discussion. And he constantly sought reassurance.

  “Sheel, babe,” he’d say to his wife, Sheila. “Look at this new carpet! Isn’t it great?”

  Then he’d turn to us: “Isn’t my wife the greatest?”

  And after playing a test pressing of Connie Francis’s new recording of an Aldon song: “Doesn’t Connie sound great? This is gonna be a smash!”

  For Donnie, everything connected with him was “great.” Ironically, that’s what made Donnie great. His enthusiasm was so infectious that he got everyone within earshot all fired up about whatever he was fired up about, and what he was usually the most fired up about was convincing the artist or producer of a top 10 hit to record an Aldon song and release it as their next single, which Donnie called the “follow-up.” When Donnie said, “Come on, guys, we gotta get that follow-up!” that was an unambiguous directive to head for the cubicles.

  In 1960, the hottest girl group was arguably the Shirelles, four teenage girls whose then current hit was “Tonight’s the Night.” Donnie wanted that follow-up. Shifting into high gear, he summoned each writer or writing team into his office and addressed that writer or team as if she, he, or they were the only writer or team that coul
d deliver his desired outcome.

  “Now listen,” he’d say. “The Shirelles are up. I’m gonna get the follow-up, and I want you to write it. Come on, babe,” he exhorted, using the term with no regard for gender. “Do it for me!”

  And we did. He made us want to do it—for him.

  The next day each writer or team, in turn, went into Al’s office to play Donnie the song they had written the night before. Al, who tended to leave the day-to-day business to Donnie, wasn’t usually there. With Gerry at work, I waited with the other writers in the reception area. Hearing snippets of each new song coming through the door filled us alternately with confidence and anxiety.

  Gerry and I competed the most fiercely against Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil. Each couple came to think of the other as “the other married songwriting team,” and each couple was intimidated by how talented the other couple was. Whether in spite of that or because of it, we four have remained friends over many decades. What we shared was unique. We Aldon songwriters may have thought of ourselves as mortal enemies when it came to getting a follow-up, but we were a tightly knit brother- and sisterhood of friends, colleagues, peers, and, most of the time, allies.

  Donnie chose Gerry’s and my song for the Shirelles. The next hurdle was playing it for the people at Scepter Records. Their office was in the same building. As soon as Donnie hung up with Scepter, he gave me the go-ahead. Bypassing the elevator, I ran up the stairs with Gerry’s handwritten lyric and played the song for Scepter’s owner, Florence Greenberg, and Luther Dixon, the cowriter and producer of “Tonight’s the Night.” Florence and Luther liked the song and wanted to record it with the Shirelles right away, so I recorded the demo right there in their studio. It was a rudimentary presentation in which I sang the song live over my piano accompaniment and tried to sound like the Shirelles’ lead singer, Shirley Owens. One of the other Shirelles—Doris Coley, Beverly Lee, or Micki Harris—told me later that when Shirley recorded the lead vocal, she was trying to sound like me sounding like her.

  Within ten weeks after it was released on November 21, 1960, “Will You Love Me Tomorrow” climbed to #1 on Billboard’s popular music chart and stayed in the top 10 for seven weeks.

  A lot of people think I wrote the lyrics for “Will You Love Me Tomorrow,” because they express so eloquently the emotions of a teenage girl worried that her boyfriend won’t love her anymore once she gives him her most precious one-time-only prize. Those lyrics were written by Gerry, whose understanding of human nature transcended gender. My contribution to “Will You Love Me Tomorrow” included writing the melody, playing piano in the studio, and arranging the string parts. Though I had previously written choral parts, I had never composed a string arrangement. But when Gerry suggested we use strings I was fearless in volunteering. I knew how to write and read music. I would work out the parts on the piano and refer to an arranger’s handbook for transposition and range.

  As I worked on the arrangement, Gerry sang ideas to me in a voice that many people considered unmusical, but I never did. Like a translator with a unique understanding of an arcane language, I was able to interpret the ideas Gerry was trying to get across. We had listened to hit records by the songwriting team of Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller for artists ranging from Wilbert Harrison (“Kansas City”) to the Coasters. We had also found inspiration in the work of Rodgers and Hammerstein and Aaron Copland. One of the most unusual arrangements we had ever heard was composed by Stanley Applebaum for Leiber and Stoller’s production of “There Goes My Baby.” Who but Leiber and Stoller would have thought to combine the voice of Ben E. King with cellos and timpani? That was visionary.

  We, too, tried to be visionary. With “There Goes My Baby” as our model, I incorporated Gerry’s ideas and my melodic lines into an arrangement meant to complement the voices of the Shirelles. I tried to make my charts look as professional as the ones I’d seen on the music stands at Don Costa’s sessions by hand-copying the part for each instrument separately on music staff paper with a steel ruler and India ink. I wish I’d known that an arranger had only to scratch out a score in pencil and a team of copyists would work overnight to make the charts look the way they did on the music stands. After many hours handwriting more than fifteen charts, I was bleary-eyed. I looked at the clock. It was 4:45 a.m. I looked in on Louise and then went to bed.

  The alarm rang entirely too soon. I dragged myself out of bed, brought Louise to my grandmother’s, then took the BMT up to Scepter. Recording the rhythm track took less than an hour. Then the string players arrived. The first time I heard the cellos play the rhythmic figure at the beginning of “Will You Love Me Tomorrow,” I was euphoric. To this day I can think of no greater musical joy than to hear a song or an arrangement come to life with instruments and voices. Some composers literally hear the sounds in their head as they write; Don Costa reportedly was such a composer. I had to wait until a session to hear what I wrote. As the musicians began to play the parts I had written for “Will You Love Me Tomorrow,” I became giddy with excitement. My little black dots and squiggles on the page were coming out as beautiful music. The experience exceeded my wildest expectations.

  I was eighteen.

  The first time we heard “Will You Love Me Tomorrow” on the radio we were in our 1956 Mercury Monterey. We didn’t care that the speakers were low-fidelity. We knew how it was supposed to sound. The following week, “Will You Love Me Tomorrow” leaped onto the charts with what the industry called a bullet. Gerry and I had set a million as the number of singles sold that would trigger him quitting his day job. The day Donnie learned that the record had reached the million mark, he insisted on conveying the information personally to Gerry. He had his driver pick me up and then we drove to Gerry’s workplace in Brooklyn. Upon hearing the news, Gerry walked away from his job and, as he said many years later, he hasn’t had a real job since.

  Though Gerry and I remained each other’s primary collaborator, he began using his newly available daytime hours to write with other Aldon writers. One such collaboration with Barry Mann, “Who Put the Bomp,” would become a hit single with Barry as the artist. I, too, collaborated with other writers, notably Cynthia Weil and Howie Greenfield. Aldon had become one of the hottest publishers in the business, but none of us stopped long enough to notice how successful the company was. We were too busy competing to be Donnie’s “go-to” songwriters.

  I never understood why some of Gerry’s relatives persisted in referring to him as a “bum” even though he had been gainfully employed as a chemist. Quitting his day job only confirmed their opinion of him—until they realized that he was making more money than they were, at which point they took great pride in his success.

  Now that we had reasonable financial security, with Gerry collaborating with other writers, I was hoping to lighten my workload and spend more time at home with Louise.

  It didn’t quite work out that way.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Daughter Momentum

  Division of labor in a family in the early sixties held that it was the man’s responsibility to earn enough income to support his family while his wife handled household chores and child care—then considered “woman’s work.” Gerry was a loving husband and father who never failed to support his family, but he wasn’t much help with chores or children. He might have been more helpful had I asked, but I didn’t know enough to ask. I actually enjoyed two of my jobs (music and child care), and I really didn’t mind folding laundry, ironing, or washing dishes, especially when I could time those tasks to coincide with reruns of I Love Lucy. Sometimes I did all three jobs simultaneously. When I held Louise, vacuumed, and commented on a lyric Gerry was working on from the comfort of his armchair, it never occurred to me that I had a right to expect my husband to participate equally in child care and housework. This would have been true even if I hadn’t been earning half of our income.

  I found child care at once challenging and joyous. It was challenging to be responsible for a little being
with needs to be met ahead of mine, and utterly delightful to have this bright, beautiful, healthy little girl in my life. I loved learning the things I needed to know as a new mother and rediscovering things Louise learned as if I were learning them for the first time. This was equally true with our second daughter, Sherry Marlene Goffin, who arrived on March 3, 1962. But meeting the needs of two little beings made my role as a mother somewhat more complicated. I soon found myself saying things that all parents swear as children that they’ll never say to their children. “Share your toys!” and “Stop that right now!” became part of my daily vocabulary along with “No bickering!” and “Because I said so!”

  Propelled by daughter momentum, we acquired so much “stuff” that we were bursting out of our apartment. Gerry’s wish to raise our girls in Manhattan was overridden by practicality. We found a house in a newly platted subdivision in West Orange, New Jersey, took out a mortgage, and moved to the suburbs.

  That lighter workload I had envisioned for myself after Gerry quit his day job never materialized. I still had to drive to the city to play songs for artists and producers and sing and play on demos. The commute from New Jersey took at least an hour each way. And while it was possible to bring one child and her gear to the city, it was exponentially more difficult to bring two children and twice the gear.

  In simpler times, when extended families lived near each other, older women helped younger women, stay-at-home sisters cared for nieces and nephews, and neighbors looked after each other’s children. In the more mobile early sixties, working mothers had to hire outside help. While we were still living in Brooklyn, several babysitters had come and gone—including one who moved on to a different career. In New Jersey, my need to be in the city with Gerry several times a week made it essential that I find someone reliable to care for my girls. My prayers were answered when we found Willa Mae Phillips. With no biological children of her own, Willa Mae devoted her maternal energy to my children and remained a beloved member of our family from the time she came to work for us in New Jersey until her death in the mid-seventies. The memory of Willa Mae endures every time we repeat one of her down-home sayings. For example, after the entire family had torn the house apart for twenty minutes searching for car keys, a wristwatch, or a missing schoolbook, Willa Mae, having located the item in an obvious place, would hold it up triumphantly, saying, “If it’d been a snake, it would-a bit you.”