Mary Chapin Carpenter

An Ivy League-educated singer/songwriter from the Northeast with a reflective, literate style of lyric writing, Mary Chapin Carpenter has always stopped short of mocking the sequined outfits, big hair, and simple romanticism often associated with country divas. Accordingly, Carpenter's music - which incorporates folk and rock textures as well as country - has been embraced by both Nashville and fans of progressive pop.

Carpenter grew up mostly in Princeton, listening to records by Woody Guthrie, the Beatles, and Judy Collins and playing her mother’s acoustic guitar. After she graduated from high school in Washington, DC, where her family had moved, her father, a publishing executive, encouraged her to attend an open-mike session at a local bar. Though reluctant at first, the singer soon began performing live on a regular basis, while studying at Brown University, where she earned a degree in American civilization. Carpenter spent weekends and summers performing a mixture of radio hits and rootsy standards in bars. After graduating, she decided to focus more on her own material and moved back to Washington, DC, where she won several local music awards and became a favorite on the local club circuit. In the mid-'80s Carpenter landed a deal with Columbia Records.

Carpenter’s debut album was released on Columbia in 1987. The articulate country-folk songs on Hometown Girl impressed critics, but it was her sophomore album, 1989’s State of the Heart, that proved Carpenter’s commercial potential, spawning two Top 10 country hits: “Never Had It So Good” (#8) and, in 1990, “Quittin’ Time” (#7). The Academy of Country Music named Carpenter 1989’s Best New Female Vocalist.

The ’90s saw Carpenter’s star rise even higher. Her 1990 album, Shooting Straight in the Dark, yielded the #1 country single “Down at the Twist and Shout,” a hit that won her a 1991 Grammy for Best Female Country Vocal Performance. Come On Come On (1992) reached #6 on the country albums charts, producing seven hit singles and earning the singer another Grammy, for a cheekily sexy track called “I Feel Lucky.” That single peaked at #4 on the C&W chart, as did “Passionate Kisses” (written by Lucinda Williams [see entry]), for which Carpenter won her third Best Female Country Vocal Performance Grammy. “He Thinks He’ll Keep Her” reached #1 C&W. Carpenter’s Stones in the Road (1994) featured such guest musicians as country artists Lee Roy Parnell and Trisha Yearwood, folkie Shawn Colvin, Heartbreaker Benmont Tench, saxophonist Branford Marsalis, onetime R.E.M. producer Don Dixon (on bass), and drummer Kenny Aronoff. The album continued Carpenter’s awards streak, netting her fourth consecutive best female country vocal award for “Shut Up and Kiss Me” and that year’s Best Country Album Grammy for Stones in the Road.

Carpenter started exploring another creative outlet when she wrote her own essays for the Stones in the Road tour book in 1995. Her ability to write nonfiction prose, along with her social activism, led her to contribute an essay to A Voice of Our Own: Leading American Women Celebrate the Right to Vote, a 1996 book that also featured the writings of First Ladies Rosalynn Carter and Hillary Rodham Clinton, among others. Carpenter became a bona fide author with the publication of a children’s book, Dreamland, the same year; it was based on a lullaby she’d written and recorded for a compilation album. The musician didn’t forsake the recording world for publishing, however; she also released her sixth album, A Place in the World (#20 pop), in 1996. The album produced more country hits in the Grammy-nominated “Let Me Into Your Heart” (#11) and “I Want to Be Your Girlfriend” (#35).

Carpenter published a second children’s book, Halley Came to Jackson - also based on one of her songs - in 1998. Party Doll and Other Favorites, featuring greatest hits, live cuts, and rare tracks from compilations, peaked at #4 on the country album chart in 1999. She returned with her first album of new material in five years with time*sex*love* in 2001.

from The Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock & Roll (Simon & Schuster, 2001)