Singer-songwriter who began her musical career as part
of a sister act in the mid-'60s.Carly and Lucy Simon managed to graze the
Billboard Hot 100 when "Winkin', Blinkin' and Nod" went to #73 in April of
1964.The Simon Sisters
recorded a trio of albums before Lucy quit to raise
a family.Carly
pursued a solo career and had a pretty good backing band that comprised
Mike Bloomfield, Rick Danko, Al Kooper, Richard Manuel, and Robbie Robertson, but for
whatever reason, plans to release her first solo album were scrapped.In 1971, five years after that
debacle, Simon scratched the top ten with "That's the Way I've
Always Heard It Should Be", a song she co-wrote with Jacob Brackman, who was a movie critic by trade. " Anticipation", the
title track of her second album, went to #13 later that year.The album was hugely popular and it
led to her first Grammy award, for Best New Artist.Simon topped the charts in 1972 with
"You're So Vain" and the album that it was from, No Secrets, went gold.Wedding bells rang for Carly Simon and James Taylor on 3rdNovember 1972.Their musical marriage produced the
top-five hit "Mockingbird", a cover of the old Inez Foxx
tune.Carly
continued to pepper in the charts in the '70s with "The Right
Thing To Do", "I Haven't Got Time For The Pain",
and "Nobody Does It Better", the famous theme song from 1977's
The Spy Who Loved Me.A year later, "You Belong To
Me", a song co-penned with Michael McDonald, went to #6.Its accompanying album, Boys in the Trees, went platinum.While on tour in support of 1980's
Come Upstairs, Carly collapsed on stage in Pittsburgh.This was the origin of her now
famous stage fright, and it would haunt her for years.The album, nevertheless, spawned a
couple of hits, "Jesse" and "Why".The singer-songwriter turned torch singer
in 1981 on; well, Torch.She continued the trend in the '90s
with My Romance and Film Noir.A trend she did not continue was
being married to James Taylor.They divorced in 1983.The
'80s saw Carly have some success as a
composer for film, cracking the top twenty with "Coming Around Again"
from the Jack Nicholson-Meryl Streep film Heartburn.Carly won
an Academy Award for Best Original Song, and a Grammy Award, for "Let
the River Run", which she penned for the Melanie Griffith comedy, Working Girl.She also embarked on a side career
as a children's author, writing Amy
the Dancing Bear and The Boy of
the Bells and The Fisherman's Song.In the '90s, she did another
180 and wrote a children's opera, Romulus
Hunt, which enjoyed its opening on the boards of the Kennedy Center for
the Performing Arts and The Metropolitan Opera.In 1994, she released a rather
unusual album called Letters Never
Sent, which was based on real, unsent letters that she had amassed over
time.Carly
also found the courage to step on stage again, in concert with Daryl Hall
and John Oates.In 1997, Simon
was beset with breast cancer, and underwent chemotherapy and a mastectomy,
and fortunately was able to beat it.She found some therapy in music, writing personal songs like "Scar"
for an album titled The Bedroom Tapes.The album was released in 2000, as
was Mother Goose's Basket Full
of Rhymes.Janet Jackson
sampled "You're So Vain" and employed Carly's
vocal talents for "Son of a Gun (I Betcha
Think This Song is About You)" in 2001.A year later, Simon released Christmas is Almost Here and
hand-picked the songs that would appear on Rhino Records' Anthology.She remained in the spirit in 2004
with a series of holiday concerts at the Apollo Theater in New York.Simon also continued to contribute
to children's culture by penning songs for Piglet's Big Movie and Pooh'sHeffalump Movie,
and adults', with music she wrote for the Holly Hunter-Brittany
Murphy film Little Black Book, in
which she also appears.In
2004, Reflections:Carly
Simon's Greatest Hits hit the shelves and went to #22 on the
Billboard Top 200.A year
later, she released another album of standards, Moonlight Serenade, which entered the charts at #7, and
supported the album with her first tour in a decade.In 2007, Carly
released Into White, a collection
of lullabies and other songs by artists as diverse as The Beatles, The Everly Brothers, Judy Garland, and Cat Stevens.It debuted at #15 on the Billboard
chart.In her copious free
time, she serves as co-owner of Midnight Farm, a store that culls its title
from one of her children's books.Carly
Simon was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1994 and was honoured with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in
2005.
Carly
Simon recordings
You're So Vain (Carly
Simon)
His Friends Are More Than Fond Of Robin (Carly Simon)
