Paul Williams/The Carpenters -- We've Only Just Begun

 

Welcome to the weekly Reminiscings of Youth, and all I gotta say here is that if anyone back in the early 1970s in California whose family was about to celebrate a wedding or a major wedding anniversary had watched this commercial for Crocker National Bank, they would have rapidly used up the tissue box. The jingle here was "We've Only Just Begun" by Paul Williams and Roger Nichols with Williams singing it. 

I remember Williams back then more as a TV personality who showed up on comedy-variety programs such as "Laugh-In", so I had assumed that he was just a wisecracking comedian. It wasn't until much later that I realized his stock-in-trade was as a singer-songwriter. Certainly, I didn't know about him coming up with "We've Only Just Begun". According to the Wikipedia article for the song, it apparently worked a little too well for the Crocker Bank since it did bring in the young customers but they had no collateral for the loans, so the campaign ended up getting suspended.

Still, "We've Only Just Begun" made it onto Williams' 1971 album "Just an Old Fashioned Love Song". It's a very intimate and subdued love ballad that paints the picture of a newly-married couple perhaps having their first dinner in their new house (bought with a loan) consisting of a candle, a spread-out newspaper on the bare floor, a bottle of red wine and Spaghetti-Os. The hope is that it just gets better from there.

Fate had other plans for "We've Only Just Begun", though. Richard Carpenter saw the bank commercial and ran into Williams in the parking lot for A&M Records (both were contracted there) and asked the songwriter whether he could take a crack at the song. Williams didn't seem to have a problem with it, and so as any Carpenters fan would know, "We've Only Just Begun" was released as The Carpenters' third single in August 1970. 

Richard and Karen Carpenter came to think of "We've Only Just Begun" as their trademark tune and I think that out of their huge discography, the song rates as one of their most Carpenter-esque creations. I mean, there are the horns, the lonely woodwind, Karen's incredible vocals and those harmonies between the siblings that still manage to raise the hairs on my neck. The song hit No. 1 on the Adult Contemporary charts for both Canada and the United States, and in the latter country, it stayed at the top for seven straight weeks and it was their most successful single. I recall hearing it plenty of times on the radio. Incidentally, when it was released in Japan, it did so under the title of "Ai no Prelude"（愛のプレリュード...Prelude to Love）.

To think, one of the most eternal romantic pop standards started out as a melodic plea to apply for a loan. Anyways, I managed to find a website listing the Top 10 on Oricon for August 3rd 1970. Unfortunately, I have yet to profile the Top 3 songs on "Kayo Kyoku Plus" but here are Nos. 4-6.

4. Keiko Fuji -- Keiko no Yume wa Yoru Hiraku（圭子の夢は夜ひらく）

5. Hiroshi Uchiyamada and The Cool Five -- Uwasa no Onna （噂の女）

6. Mari Henmi -- Keiken （経験）