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Las Vegas’ ‘Carpenters Legacy’: Sally Olson brings her dream home to Rutland
RutlandHerald.com, by Janelle Faignant - March 30, 2024
Five years ago, Rutland native Sally Olson was bringing her Carpenters tribute show to Brandon for the second time. It was a new show she had created a few years before, but it was taking off fast, and she had made the move to Las Vegas to pursue her dream of having a theater residency there. Well, that day has come, and now she’s bringing her Las Vegas show to Rutland for one night this week to share it with the community she grew up in.
“Carpenters Legacy” will come to the Paramount Theatre at 7 p.m. Friday, April 5, paying tribute to one of the most popular music duos from the 1970s.
Born and raised in Rutland (Rutland High School 1999), Olson looks uncannily like Karen Carpenter — big brown eyes, bouncy brown hair, slight frame. But most of all, Olson’s voice is an uncanny echo of Carpenter’s. With a singing and acting background to boot, it seemed obvious that she should “become” Carpenter — but it started in 2009, when Olson spent some years working at the Bill Reed Voice Studio in Burlington.
“(That) gave me the opportunity to see behind the scenes of the business,” Olson said recently. “And I started training professionally in singing.”
In 2010, she attended Circle in the Square Theatre School in New York City, and by 2013, Bill Reed suggested she put together a one-woman show.
“In very short order, it became the Carpenters,” Olson said.
“It started out as just songs that I like,” she said back in 2019. “The more research I did about Karen, I really related to her on a personal level. That’s what gelled together and made me passionate about the project and becoming Karen onstage.”
The early version was a cabaret show, Olson on stage with a pianist. “I wasn’t in character, but I’d be in costume telling the story of Karen Carpenter,” she explained.
The potential was there, and other industry professionals she crossed paths with noticed.
In 2017, through connections she’d made at Circle in the Square, Olson brought the show to New York City’s renowned Triad Theatre. A colleague suggested she look into Las Vegas.
“That’s the place to be as a tribute artist and impersonator,” Olson said. So, in January 2018, she went out West, where a mutual friend introduced her to Ned Mills. Mills proved to be the missing piece Olson was looking for to drive the show forward.
Just before she met Mills, Olson was reimagining the show to perform 100% in character and knew she needed someone to play the role of Karen’s brother Richard.
Footage of the Carpenters online brought her to their 1976 tour, when Broadway producers were consulted and the shows shifted from a string of ballads to a dynamic act. Olson re-ordered the songs in her own show to mirror it. She transcribed the script they delivered on stage. All she was missing was Richard.
“(That’s) when Ned walked into the scene,” she said.
Mills had been living in Las Vegas for 20 years with his own show, “Piano Follies,” a tribute to the music of George Gershwin, Jerry Lee Lewis, Broadway and a little Liberace. He had opened for national acts like Don Rickles and Joan Rivers; served as musical director and arranger for “The Stars of the Lawrence Welk Show” and performed as pianist for the Rockettes.
“I sat in on several gigs he had that week and we hit it off,” Olson recalled. “I told him I needed somebody to play the role of Richard. He was game and had all the skills to really do justice to the role.”
“What Ned has been instrumental in putting together is a full production,” Olson said. “Before, I was telling the story of Karen and doing ballads in no particular order, but now the show is a recreation of their 1976 UK Tour. And we chose that because it’s the pinnacle of their career. From that point on the show was scripted and funny with a lot of shtick and comedy.”
At Bill Reed Voice Studio, Olson had studied Broadway and classical vocal training, but when she got to Las Vegas she added pop vocal training. “It’s different from either of those,” she said. “The Seth Riggs method really helped me take it to the next level.”
With a distinctive three-octave contralto range, Karen Carpenter appeared on Rolling Stone’s 2010 list of the 100 greatest singers of all time. She sadly passed away in 1983 at the age of 32 of heart failure, mourned by fans the Carpenters had won worldwide during the 1970s and early ’80s.
People seem to know less about Richard, who developed an interest in music at a young age and became a piano prodigy.
“Richard in my opinion is one of the most underappreciated pianists of our day,” Mills said. “Very talented jazz pianist, composer, and he created the signature harmonies for the Carpenter sound.”
Together, Olson and Mills created the world’s only authentic Carpenter tribute show. They perform 100% in character as the famous brother-sister duo with spot-on vocals, authentic hairstyles and vintage costumes. It’s a 3D trip down memory lane.
“We recreate their dialogue on stage,” Mills said. “And you’ll see Karen on video and Sally doing the same gestures, same movements. We’ve heard people gasp.”
Fans will hear hits like “We’ve Only Just Begun,” “Close to Me” and “Superstar.” Plus Karen’s drum solo and Richard’s piano feature.
“Carpenters Legacy” joins the ranks of Elvis, Adele and Garth Brooks among others to have a Las Vegas residency — a staple of the Las Vegas Strip pioneered by Liberace in the 1940s and Frank Sinatra in the 1950s.
The tribute is on stage four nights a week in residency in the V Theater at Planet Hollywood Resort & Casino. It’s a six-time winner of the Best of Las Vegas Awards including “Best Impersonator,” “Best Tribute Show” and “Best Family Friendly Show.” And Olson is the first-ever and only Karen Carpenter tribute artist to perform with the world-renowned Legends in Concert.
“I look back on it now, and I was basically unaware that the tribute show industry was a thing,” Olson said. “I was doing my first recording sessions at Lane Gibson Recording in Charlotte, and he brought it up — this is a niche market that is getting more and more popular, you should try to take this as far as possible.”
“(But) I wasn’t strategically trying to plan it when I decided I wanted to do a tribute show. It was really a happy accident,” she said. “Fortunately, the Carpenters’ music does have wide appeal, and I think it’s having a resurgence, too. We have more and more young people in the audience, so it’s exciting for us to see (that).”
“It brings back a more innocent time of the ’70s,” Mills said.
So, after a decade of hard work and “having doors slammed in your face,” Mills said, “the magic formula — it’s Sally’s passion and refusal to take ‘no’ for an answer” that landed their dream job in Las Vegas. And the popularity of the Carpenters still today is seen night after sold-out night.
Bringing the show to Rutland was always part of Olson’s plan. “That’s where I was born and raised,” she said. “Since I started doing this tribute I envisioned bringing it to the Paramount.”
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