Sunday Music: Close To You/We've Only Just Begun

In looking back over two-plus years of selections, we seem to have left out this brother/sister duo. Richard was a piano prodigy, Karen was a very skilled drummer, and both those talents were overshadowed by Karen's unbelievably rich singing voice. Which talents all combined for them to basically crush all pop charts from about '70-'75. They were one of the first fledgling discoveries of Herb Alpert (the "A" in A&M Records) when Karen was only 19, and who had one of the most phenomenal, unique, and recognizable singing voices of all time. To make up for the oversight, we go with two selections from among their first of many, many hits, both winning Grammy awards, and both going all the way to #1, in May and August of 1970. Over fifty years later, she still sounds like she's singing just to you, from right next to your ear, and the songs still resonate with the same power they did the first time we heard them.*

*FWIW, we spent a couple of days digging through the vaults, and true to today's second selection, we've got another two years of Sunday Music choices already teed up. And we're just getting warmed up.