Music: King as Queen?

(2 of 2)

So, too, is Carole's way of living. In the early Tin Pan Alley days she and Goffin, whom she has since divorced, led a hectic life, and had to bring their baby to the office. Now she lets very little disturb the life she has arranged for herself in the Laurel Canyon house in Los Angeles where she tends to her nine-and eleven-year-old daughters by her first marriage; she is expecting the first child of her recent marriage to Bass Player Charles Larkey.

Strange are the ways of pop taste. When Janis died last fall, it seemed for a while that women had lost their one stronghold in the world of rock. Now not only Carole but a number of other girls are trying to fill it. Among them: > Carly Simon, 26, offspring of a branch of the publishing Simons (& Schuster). At Sarah Lawrence, she and Sister Lucy had a popular folk duo called the Simon Sisters. Carly's debut album on Elektra shows her to be an adept composer in a fair range of styles (folk, country, pop). As a singer, she can be dusky and down-home simple in One More Time, or full of poised wisdom in her top-20 single That's the Way I've Always Heard It Should Be. >Linda Ronstadt, 25, has had two Capitol LPs out in less than a year. Born in Tucson, Ariz., she is basically a country-rock stylist. Her musical interests (Cajun and mariachi among them) are broad, and she can somehow get as much kick into singing a slow blues number as into a wailing rock version of Wayne Raney's We Need a Lot More of Jesus (and a Lot Less Rock and Roll). — Rita Coolidge, 26, is a Baptist preacher's daughter raised in Nashville, Tenn. She began singing as a pre-schooler in Daddy's choir, later polished her technique on four-part harmony in a Memphis jingle factory, learned country-rock as a back-up singer with Delaney & Bonnie. Such rock celebrities as Leon Russell, Stephen Stills and Ry Cooder were happy to play back-up on her new (and first) A & M album —perhaps because of the sensational way she can bend a slow romantic ballad to a voice of pure honey and magnolia.