Second Cup Café: Carly Simon

Carly Simon has a Golden Globe, and Oscar, two Grammys, and a place in the Songwriter's Hall Of Fame. Her hits, like "You're So Vain" and "Anticipation" have become pop classics, and throughout her career she's applied her writing skills to movies, books and even opera.

She visits Second Cup Café to perform songs from her latest album, "Into White," a collection of pop ballads and traditional songs released in January.

As the daughter of one of the founders of publishing giant Simon & Schuster, Simon grew up in wealth and comfort.

Her father, Richard L. Simon, was a pianist who loved Bach and Beethoven. Her mother favored Broadway show tunes. Carly loved it all, including folk, jazz, and rock 'n' roll.

"I thought, 'Well, if I had the nerve, I'd be a singer.' But I was always shy," she told CBS Sunday Morning. "And ... I always had this ambivalent feeling of wanting to be in the spotlight, but being too shy to be in the spotlight."

She also had a stammer, but discovered that it disappeared when she would sing.

Soon she was singing whenever, wherever she could. With her sister, Lucy, she formed the Simon Sisters.

While at Sarah Lawrence College, Simon and her sister played the Bitter End and the Gaslight clubs in Greenwich Village, opening for Woody Allen, Bill Cosby, Dick Cavett and other soon-to-be-famous people.

"We wore matching dresses and caught the train, very late at night, back to our schools in the private sector," Simon said in her official biography.

After leaving school to live with her boyfriend in France, Simon returned to New York where she worked for a television production company.

When she wasn't at work, she was writing songs in the hopes that she could make some money from the publishing. She sent her songs to a number of well-known singers, but never heard from any of them.

Simon eventually met Jerry Brandt who became her mananger and helped her land her first record deal, in 1970.

The following year she released her self-titled debut album which contained her first hit, "That's The Way I've Always Heard it Should Be."

During the 1970s she continued to rack up the hits with "You're So Vain," "Haven't Got Time For The Pain," "Anticipation" and "Mockingbird."

The last song featured her husband, singer-songwriter James Taylor, with whom she had two children, Sally and Ben. The couple divorced in 1983. Simon has been married to writer James Hart since 1987.

In 1977, Simon recorded the theme song for the James Bond movie "The Spy Who Loved Me." The song, "Nobody Does It Better" was written by Marvin Hamlisch and his wife, Carol Bayer Sager.

She had another hit in 1978 with "You Belong To Me" from the album "Boys In The Trees," and followed that in 1980 with the No. 1 single "Jesse" from the album, "Come Upstairs."

The 1980s were relatively quiet for Simon, until 1988 when she scored another hit with "Let The River Run" from the soundtrack of the movie "Working Girl." The song won a Golden Globe, an Oscar and a Grammy. She also recorded two albums of standards, "My Romance" and "Torch," and wrote "Amy The Dancing Bear," the first of several books for children.

In the 1990s, Simon wrote more music for films, and was commissioned by the Metropolitan Opera Guild and the Kennedy Center to write a family opera. The work did not receive great reviews, but Simon said, "I am very honored to have been asked to write and record it. The work was the farthest I've ever stretched. And I loved a lot of the result."

She was inducted into the Songwriters; Hall of Fame in 1994.

In 2000, after recovering from breast cancer, Simon released her first studio album in six years, "The Bedroom Tapes"

In 2005, she released "Moonlight Serenade," another album of standards.

Her latest, "Into White" features covers of songs by Cat Stevens, Judy Garland and The Beatles.