[1][7] Prior to working in advertising, Karmen was a Calypso singer and scored soundtracks for nudie films such as The Candidate (1964) and What Do You Say to a Naked Lady?
[8] Karmen was born in the Bronx, New York[9] into a conservative family,[citation needed] the son of a civil engineer and an accountant.
Art Davis encouraged him to travel to Trinidad, where he might find better success as a Calypso singer, and Karmen worked on a cruise ship for two months.
[10][9] Karman moved to Los Angeles, intent on pursuing a career in acting after feeling out of sync with music trends, but returned to New York within ten months.
[24] When he returned, he began working on his own album, We've All Been There, which he wrote for "emotionally tormented men and women" dealing with loss.
[25][24] In 1978, he told The Tampa Tribune that the "biggest restriction" of writing jingles is that he was largely barred from tapping into deeper emotions, something he felt he achieved only in his public service advertisements, which he pointed out only run in the middle of the night.
[15][26][20] In 1995, however, he wrote two free songs for a hospital association that approached him to ask about writing music to "[fight] proposed Medicaid and Medicare cuts."
[20][27] He told The New York Times in 1989 that "90% of agencies" were unwilling to hire him because of this;[1] by this point, however, Hershey, Budweiser, and Michelob were already among his repeat clients.