GRAND Magazine - Spring 2021 - 18

cover story
daughter. King's chosen grandma name
is simply Grandma!
Whether through nature or nurture,
many of King's progeny have followed
her into the arts. Louise Goffin has a
notable career as a singer-songwriter,
and Sherry Goffin Kondor is a musician
and producer. Molly Larkey is an artist.
As for the grandchildren, Dillon is
a guitarist and singer, while Sophie
is a business major (King jokes that
Sophie's experience of touring in utero
with her mother " contributed to her
decision early in life not to become a
professional musician " ). Louise's two
Carole King plays herself in the Broadway musical " Beautiful "
ifty years later, Tapestry is recognized as one of the greatest albums of all time sons, Elijah and Hayden Wells, are both
musicians.
(#25 out of 500, on Rolling Stone's 2020 list), recipient of four Grammys-
including Album of the Year and Song of the Year ( " You've Got a Friend " )-she
The story of a shy but
was the first woman ever to win that award.
Tapestry is justly celebrated as " the soundtrack of our lives. " Many of us who
determined girl
Carole with her parents, Eugenia
grew up between the '50s and the '70s understand at a deep level what her songs
and Sidney Klein
Given her phenomenal success, it's
are about-the experiences of love, friendship, family, separation, uprootedness,
hard to believe that King was once so
and trying to find acceptance for who we are. Tapestry brings together the threads shy about her singing voice that James Taylor had to literally push her to the mic
of many colors Carole King has woven into a full and rich life.
at his college concert tour in 1970.

The granddaughter of Jewish immigrants from Poland, King was born Carol
Joan Klein in 1942 to a firefighter and his wife in Brooklyn. Her mother, Eugenia,
She has four adult children and is the grandmother of five.
played piano and started teaching Carole at age 4. She proved to be a prodThe two little girls, King's daughters with her first husband and songwriting
igy. At 15 she was already writing songs like the pop music she heard on the
partner Gerry Goffin-Louise and Sherry Goffin-have grown children of their
radio-and had even landed a contract at ABC Paramount Records. At 16 Carole
own. King's two other children, Molly and Levi Larkey, were born from her second enrolled at Queens College where she met a dark-haired 19-year-old named
marriage to musician Charlie Larkey.
Gerry Goffin. They married when Carole got pregnant at 17. With Carole comIn 1986 at the age of 44, King became the proud grandmother of Dillon Kondor, posing the music and Gerry writing the lyrics, an astonishingly prolific songwritSherry's son. Three years later Dillon's sister Sophie was born. Then Louise had two ing duo was born.
sons, Elijah and Hayden Wells. King's youngest grandchild is Ocean Larkey, Levi's

Meet the family

18 GRAND

Spring 2021

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GRAND Magazine - Spring 2021

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of GRAND Magazine - Spring 2021