The personal piano of Carole King, one of the most popular and prolific American songwriters of our time, will be auctioned at Christie's in New York on April 20 in The Exceptional Sale.
King used this 1924 Steinway model “M” piano to compose several hits, including Sweet Seasons and Been to Canaan, and it is featured on the cover of two of her best-selling albums of the 70s, “Music and Sweet Seasons” . The piano is estimated at $40.000 - $60.000 and will be on public view April 12-20 at Christie's Rockefeller Galleries.
Becky MacGuire, head of The Exceptional Sale, comments: “It is magical to sit at this instrument that has been played and loved for decades by the legendary Carole King, writer and performer of music loved by generations of listeners".
Since writing her first No. 1, Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow at the tender age of 17, Carole King has written or co-written 118 Billboard Top 100 hits, including (You Make Me Feel) Like a Natural Woman, immortalized by Aretha Franklin and You've Got a Friend, popularized by James Taylor. Beginning in 1970, King recorded his own music, achieving enormous success as a singer and performer, with lifetime album sales now exceeding 75 million.
Carole King has been the recipient of numerous awards and accolades including four Grammy Awards and has been inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame and Rock and Roll Hall of Fame for her songwriting. She is the recipient of the 2013 Library of Congress Gershwin Award for Popular Song, the first woman to be so honored, and the musical based on her life and the music of the times, Beautiful: The Carole King Musical, is in its 5th smash year on Broadway at the Stephen Sondheim Theater.
From 1971 the piano sat in the living room of Carole King's home on Appian Way in Laurel Canyon, California, a home often filled with musicians and friends such as James Taylor, Joni Mitchell, Lou Adler, Betsy and Peter Asher and Toni Stern. The piano has graced the King's Idaho ranch's personal recording studio for the past several decades
