Richard Carpenter

* * "TIME." Richard Carpenter. A&M. Karen Carpenter's death in 1983 left her brother Richard's recording career in limbo. He produced and arranged the Carpenters' long string of hits, and had written several of them. Still, it was Karen's warm, expressive vocals that made those hits so distinctive. On this, Carpenter's first album without her, he had to make a choice: find another lead vocalist, recruit guest vocalists, or sing all the songs himself.

Three people were wounded and two of them were being detained after an altercation erupted into gunfire at a Houston-area community college, officials said Tuesday. The incident, which rekindled fears of yet another gun-related attack at a school, came during a continuing national debate over gun control. “We know there is an ongoing discussion about guns, but we never expected to be part of it,” Richard Carpenter, chancellor of the Lone Star College System, said in a nationally televised news conference.

The idea of honey-voiced '70s pop icon Richard Carpenter owning a spiked truncheon seems unfathomable. Yet such an object is on display at the Carpenters Exhibit in the lobby of the Richard and Karen Carpenter Performing Arts Center at Cal State Long Beach. This puzzling item was actually a gag gift offered by the manager of the brother-and-sister band on the assumption that Richard would attract so many crazed female admirers he'd need to "beat them off with a stick."

K arenandRichard. Those names were linked so often in the 1970s, when the Carpenters were the hottest duo in pop music, that many pop fans came to think of the pair as one. That was fine early in the decade when the Downey brother-and-sister team was turning out instant standards such as "We've Only Just Begun" and "Close to You," but it started to bother Karen in the late 1970s when the duo's fortunes declined sharply.

"If I'd had my druthers, it wouldn't have been made at all." Those words come from Richard Carpenter, who spent most of his professional life as half of that 1970s pop music phenomenon known as The Carpenters. He is talking about "The Karen Carpenter Story," a CBS made-for-TV movie for next season based on the short life of his sister Karen, who died at 32 after a 7-year battle with anorexia nervosa.

The Carpenters were called a lot of things in the '70s, but hip was never one of them. The brother and sister from Downey were known almost as much for their squeaky-clean image as for their poignant ballads. But a lot of certifiably hip acts have been singing Karen and Richard's praises lately. And now 14 alternative rock acts--from Sonic Youth to the Cranberries--have recorded an album in which they perform Carpenters hits in their own styles.

Frank Pooler, a longtime choral director at Cal State Long Beach who is credited with helping the 1970s pop group the Carpenters develop their signature sound, has died. He was 86. Pooler died Jan. 19 in his Los Alamitos home after a short battle with lung cancer, said his wife, Rhonda Sandberg Pooler. He began teaching at the school in 1959 and founded the choral studies department. Among the students he mentored were a gangly brother and sister, Richard and Karen Carpenter.

So here's Steven Spielberg, the man who defined blockbuster, the man with three Oscars, not to mention Emmys, Golden Globes and lifetime achievement awards. He's even got five honorary doctorates, the last one on Monday from Yale.

Ed Leffler, 57, manager and agent since 1985 for the rock group Van Halen. Publicist Maureen O'Connor said Leffler also managed the singing sister and brother act Karen and Richard Carpenter and earlier had worked with the Beatles. In Los Angeles on Saturday of throat and lung cancer.