Carole King is a Grammy Award-winning American singer and songwriter. Her career began in the 1960s when King, along with her then husband Gerry Goffin, wrote more than two dozen chart hits for numerous artists, many of which have become standards, and she has continued writing for other artists since then. King's success as a performer in her own right did not come until the 1970s, when she sang her own songs, accompanying herself on the piano, in a series of albums and concerts. After experiencing commercial disappointment with her debut album Writer, King scored her breakthrough with the album Tapestry which topped the U.S. album chart for 15 weeks in 1971 and remained on the charts for more than six years. In 2000, Joel Whitburn, a Billboard pop music researcher, named King the most successful female songwriter of 1955?99 because she wrote or co-wrote 118 pop hits on the Billboard Hot 100. She has written 61 hits on the UK charts. In 2005 music historian Stuart Devoy found her the most successful female songwriter on the UK singles charts 1952?2005. [More at Wikipedia]

February 9th, 1942 in Brooklyn (Age 82)