Karen Carpenter was blessed with one of the most exquisitely warm and inviting voices in pop history, but with a melancholy edge even on her sunniest songs. Her older brother Richard was a gifted arranger with a knack for finding the perfect song. The Southern California duo's enormous success began with classic AM radio soft-pop hits like "(They Long to Be) Close to You" and "We've Only Just Begun." A long string of fine records followed, until the siblings' personal problems began to eclipse their music. Karen's anorexia-related death in early 1983 ended one of the great pop duos.