📍Downey, California, USA
1963 – 1974“We left New Haven for Downey in June 1963, when I was thirteen. Mom and Dad had decided Richard's piano deserved Southern California, and Downey, with its flat, sunny streets of new stucco houses and aerospace plants humming at the edge of town, felt like the future. We bought a house on Fidler Avenue on the south side of town. I was the tomboy kid sister who would rather play softball in the street than practise anything. At Downey High I joined the marching band mostly to get out of gym class. Mr Gifford handed me a glockenspiel, which I couldn't stand, so I watched my friend Frankie Chavez on drums until my parents bought me a Ludwig kit of my own. Within a year I could swing through Take Five. Downey gave Richard and me our first stages: a pit band for a local production of Guys and Dolls, the trio with our friend Wes Jacobs that won the Battle of the Bands at the Hollywood Bowl, and late nights cutting demos in a session bassist's garage studio. In 1969 we signed with A&M Records as the Carpenters, and a year later we bought our parents a house on Newville Avenue, which ended up on the cover of our album Now & Then. People remember the voice. But I found myself behind a drum kit in a high school band room in Downey, and part of me always wanted to get back there. Downey still remembers us, and local fans keep our story alive in the town where it began.”
🗺️ Approximate location today
📍 Street view today