Once They Were King's Trivia Quiz

Answer: Mariah Carey

In 1990 Mariah Carey released her debut single "Visions of Love". One of the people who was intrigued by her performance was Carole King. She was so moved that she asked her if she would be prepared to record a version of her song "(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman". Whilst Carey acknowledged that she was honoured, she declined the offer, indicating that the song was one of Aretha Franklin's signature tunes and, in her opinion, it was "untouchable". Undeterred, King proposed a collaboration between the two. Carey agreed. King, then, provided a laid back melody that Carey worked into a slow-burn gospel ballad that is stunning in its delivery.

The track would be released as a single in 1992 but would, initially, appear on Carey's second album, "Emotions", released in 1991. The song also makes an appearance on Carey's "MTV Unplugged" EP, released in 1992.

Answer: The Cookies

King and Goffin created this number using a most unusual foot-stomping/hand-clapping rhythm that made it work well as a dance floor filler. It did moderately well for The Cookies on the US pop charts, but it was on the US R&B charts where it made its mark, climbing to number seven.

The Cookies had scored a hit in 1956 with a song called "In Paradise" but then, the majority of the group was snaffled by Ray Charles and became part of his back-up crew, the Raelettes. Surviving member, Dorothy Jones, kept the name and built a new group around herself and was soon discovered by Neil Sedaka, who used the group as back-up singers on some of his numbers, including the hit "Breaking Up is Hard to Do". This then led The Cookies to a contract of their own and "Chains" became their first commercial success.

The song also charted well for the group in the British charts where it was picked up by the Beatles and they would go on to record a cover of the song on their 1963 debut album "Please Please Me".

Answer: Little Eva

Chubby Checker had a huge hit in 1962 with a little number called "The Twist". This sparked a mad rush from song-writers to produce a whole range of follow-up dance tunes to ride on the coattails of that song's success. Carole King and her husband (Gerry Goffin) got themselves caught up in the copycat craze and, using "Mashed Potato Time, by Dee Dee Sharp, as their formula, created "The Loco-Motion".

Earlier that year they'd provided a hit, the song "Chains", to an all-girl group called The Cookies. The Cookies had given occasional work to a young lady by the name of Eva Boyd, who'd trekked from North Carolina to New York, seeking to make a name for herself as a singer. With little work available for her, The Cookies suggested that Goffin and King were in need of a babysitter. When Carole King found out that her babysitter could sing she suggested she record a demo of this song. King had the idea of giving the song to Sharp but Dimension Records owner, Don Kirshner, preferred Eva's version and released it under the moniker of Little Eva.

Grand Funk Railroad in 1974 and Kylie Minogue (1988) would also have hits with this enduring number.

Answer: The Crystals

"He hit me
And it felt like a kiss
He hit me
And I knew he loved me"

Chilling words, that were penned by Carole King's then husband, Gerry Goffin.
Chilling words, that Carole King struggled to get into and put a melody to.
Chilling words, that caused such a public outcry that radio stations ceased playing it and saw the single removed from sale.

Goffin and King, who had provided Little Eva with the hit "The Loco-Motion", were using the young lass as a babysitter for their children. One night she'd come home with bruises on her face and arms. When questioned by the couple she shrugged it off and went to her room saying, "he really loves me" (as remembered by King in her 2012 memoir). Both King and Goffin were dumbfounded. Goffin tried to come to grips with this by telling the story in lyric form and, eventually, the song was born.

The Crystals, most of whom were teenagers at the time, struggled to find the right sincerity for the song when recording it. This was a scenario they'd not been exposed to before and couldn't summon the right emotion. They'd been pushed into recording the number by their producer, the legendary Phil Spector, and La La Brooks (of the Crystals) described the feeling as "weird" (2012 interview with Mojo magazine). The irony here is that years later, Phil Spector, would be convicted of the murder of forty year old Lana Clarkson.

Answer: Herman's Hermits

Carole King and Gerry Goffin were a formidable song-writing team. They were also a team in another fashion... they were married with two children. This is where this tale gets a little soap-opera-ish. This lyric was written by Goffin with "Jeanie" McCrea, of The Cookies, in mind. Goffin had gone on tour with the group and had started an affair with McCrea (hence, "I'm Into Something Good"). In an era when mixed-race relationships were still a taboo subject Goffin had gotten McCrea pregnant and was not backward in coming forward to admit that he was the father of the child. One can only wonder how this made King feel and, yet, she was still professional enough to do her part of the job with the song. One can also wonder if she may have felt just a teensy bit smug when McCrea's single failed to chart on Billboard's Hot 100. (Note: It did make it onto the Cashbox charts).

English record producer, Mickie Most, heard the track and felt it was perfect for a new group he was looking after, Herman's Hermits. Lead singer, Peter Noone, was simply bubbling with enthusiasm about the fact that he was actually making a record that would be played on the radio and this energy was translated into his delivery of the song, elevating the number to another level. It also elevated the song to number one on the UK Singles charts and number thirteen on the US Billboard Hot 100.

Answer: The Monkees

The Monkees were formed specifically for a television series of the same name that went to air between 1966 and 1968. They had limited input in respect to recording and song-writing for this project and most of their songs (for the TV series) were written by contracted song-writers. Carole King and Gerry Goffin contributed a number of tunes which, in Goffin's words, were merely "throwaways". The most notable of these "throwaways" was "Pleasant Valley Sunday", a 1967 hit that made it as far as number three on the Billboard Hot 100 charts.

The band, however, was dissatisfied with this arrangement and sought to (a) have more control of the song-writing and (b) to break into the adult market. One of the moves toward this was the making of the counter-culture 1968 film "Head". King and Goffin were approached to write the theme ("The Porpoise Song) for the film. This time they had to get serious, there could be no throwaways here.

In the surreal opening sequence of the film, we see Mickey Dolenz jump off the Gerald Desmond Bridge. It is set up to look like a dream in which he is rescued by mermaids. King creates a series of wave like chords that have tinges of Eastern sounds and seem to drift in time with the dream. Then she starts to sing a series of psychedelic lyrics, provided by Goffin, that also seem to meander along and head nowhere. The film's soundtrack was scorched by fans, mainly because the music was nothing like the sounds they'd heard (and enjoyed) from The Monkees to that point. "The Porpoise Song", however, was one of the few pieces that survived the criticism and earned praise from fans and critics alike.

Answer: Bobby Vee

Operating out of a tiny cubbyhole at the Aldon Music factory in New York (a little over a block away from the Brill Building) King composed the bouncy melody for this song, but her song-writing partner, Gerry Goffin, was struggling to find the right angle for the lyric.

When King decided to seek help from Cynthia Weil, Goffin's competitive nature kicked in and he soon hit upon the line "take good care of my baby" and the song was born. King then recorded a demo, which was heard by producer Snuff Garrett, who thought it would be an ideal vehicle for Bobby Vee. Ideal it was, it shot through to number one on the US Billboard Hot 100 in September of 1961.

Answer: Donny Osmond

I used to groan every time I heard this song back in 1971. I dismissed it as lightweight "fluff" and a waste of time. But, what would I know, I was thirteen years old at the time, the same age as the young kid singing it. Then I became horrified on two fronts. First, it went to number one on the US Billboard Hot 100. This sealed the deal for the song, making it the first song to reach that spot when sung by two different artists. I figured that either there were millions of people with poor taste or that Goffin and King had somehow pushed all the right buttons (again). The song had previously reached the top spot in 1962 in the hands of Steve Lawrence.

The second bit of horror was the story that a New York Times' columnist had called the song "sick" because (he claimed) it dealt with an underage relationship. It took me a while to figure out that he was referring to the song being sung by a grown man (Steve Lawrence), rather than the thirteen year old lead singer of The Osmonds.

Answer: The Animals

There's a wonderful story about this song by Eric Burdon (lead singer of The Animals) that is recorded in Songfacts (2010) where Burdon advises he, originally, had no idea who had written this song for them until he met Carole in a doctor's office in Beverly Hills. "I didn't know it was her, I was just reading a magazine and she turned to me and said, 'You know, I hated what you did to my song.' I didn't know what to say, so all I said was, 'Well, sorry.' And then as she got up to go into the doctor's office, she turned around and said, 'But I got used to it.'"

The back-story to that interview is that The Animals had a huge hit with the cover of "The House of the Rising Sun" in 1964. Their next couple of songs failed to fire the public's imagination in the same way and their producer, Mickie Most, sought help from some famous song-writing teams in the US. One of them was King's "Don't Let Me Down". Whilst Burdon and the band understood the situation they didn't have to like it. Their payback came by turning the popsy tune on its head and providing it with an industrial makeover. Out went King's piano stylings and in came a throbbing organ, provided by Dave Rowberry, out went the acoustic guitar to be replaced by a "fuzzed-out" electric by Hilton Valentine, while, all the while, Chas Chandler was strumming out notes on his bass guitar that were full of foreboding.

Answer: The Drifters

It is 1962. Carole King is a mere slip of a girl at twenty years of age, yet she is married, she has two young children to look after and she is working full-time in a high-pressure job, churning hits out for the Aldon Music hit machine. Peace and quiet are so far away but, it is the thought of that moment of serenity that proves to be the inspiration for this song. Originally titled "My Secret Place", King produced a sophisticated, yet elegant, melody. Her husband didn't like the title and changed it to "Up on the Roof" and then embroidered the melody with one of his most graceful lyrics. To complete the trifecta, Rudy Lewis (of The Drifters) produces a vocal that lifts a secret sanctuary to a place in Heaven.

In this writer's eyes this remains one of the finest pieces of work Carole King has produced. She must have thought so too because she used it as her closing track to her debut solo album, "Writer", released in 1970.