Harry Chapin
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| Harry Chapin | ||
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 Harry Chapin
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| Background information | ||
| Born | December 7, 1942 in New York City, New York, USA | |
| Died | July 16, 1981, New York, USA | |
| Genre(s) | soft rock, folk rock | |
| Occupation(s) | singer-songwriter | |
| Instrument(s) | Vocal, guitar, piano | |
| Years active | 1971-1981 | |
| Website | http://www.harrychapin.com/ | |
Harry Forster Chapin (December 7, 1942 – July 16, 1981) was an American singer, songwriter, and humanitarian. He originally intended to be a documentary film-maker, and directed Legendary Champions in 1968, which was nominated for a documentary Academy Award. In 1971, he decided to focus on music. With Big John Wallace, Tim Scott and Ron Palmer, Chapin started playing in various local nightclubs in New York City.
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[edit] Early Life and Education
Chapin was the second of four children born to Jim and Elspeth Chapin. His parents divorced by 1950, with Elspeth keeping custody of their four sons, as Jim spent much of his life on the road as a drummer for Big Band era acts such as Woody Herman. She married film magazine editor Henry Hart a few years later.
Chapin graduated from Brooklyn Technical High School in 1960, and was among the five inductees in the school's Alumni Hall Of Fame for the year 2000. He briefly attended the United States Air Force Academy and was then an intermittent student at Cornell University. He did not complete a degree.
[edit] Music and career
Following an unsuccessful early album made with his brothers, Tom & Steve, Chapin's debut album was Heads and Tales (1972), which was a success thanks to the single "Taxi". However, Chapin's recording future became somewhat of a controversy between two powerful record companies headed by two very powerful men...Jac Holzman of Elektra records and Clive Davis of Columbia.
According to Chapin's biography Taxi: The Harry Chapin Story, by Peter M. Coan, Chapin had agreed in principle to sign with Elektra records, on the basis that he wanted a smaller record label that would give him more personal attention to his work. However, Clive Davis remained undaunted, doubling almost every cash advance offer Chapin received from Holzman. Despite a cordial relationship with Holzman, Davis had had a long history of beating Holzman over the years for particular artists, but this was one time that he did not prevail.
Chapin ultimately signed with Elektra for a smaller advance, but with provisions that made it worth the move. The biggest stipulation in the nine-album deal was that he receive free studio time, meaning he paid no recording costs. It was a move that would ultimately save Chapin hundreds of thousands of dollars over the term of his contract.
"This was completely unheard of," said Davis in the Coan book. "There was no such thing as free studio time."
Chapin's follow-up album, Sniper and Other Love Songs, was less successful despite containing the Chapin anthem "Circle" (a big European hit for The New Seekers). His third album, Short Stories, was a major success. Verities & Balderdash, released soon after, was even more successful, bolstered by the chart-topping hit single "Cat's in the Cradle", based upon a poem by his wife. Sandy Chapin had written the song inspired by her husband's life on the road, and her raising her children alone.
"Cat's in the Cradle" was Chapin's only Number One hit, shooting album sales skyward and literally making him a millionaire.
He also wrote and performed a Broadway musical, The Night That Made America Famous.
His only UK hit was "W*O*L*D", which reached #34 in 1974. His popularity in the UK owed much to the championing of BBC disc jockey Noel Edmonds. The song's success in the U.S. was borne mostly by disc jockeys playing it mainly for themselves.
By the end of the decade, Chapin's contract with Elektra (which had since merged with Asylum Records and now under the control of David Geffen) had run its course and the company made no offer to renew it. A minor deal with Casablanca fell through, and Chapin settled on a simple one-album deal with Boardwalk records. The Boardwalk album, though no one knew it at the time, would be his final work.
The title track of his last album, Sequel, was a follow up to his earlier song "Taxi" that reunited the same characters ten years later. The songs Chapin was working on at the time of his death were subsequently released as the thematic album The Last Protest Singer.
[edit] Charities and personal life
Chapin was married to Sandy Chapin, a New York socialite eight years his senior. The story of their meeting and romance is told in his song "I Wanna Learn a Love Song". He fathered two children with her, Jennifer and Joshua, and was stepfather to her three children by a previous marriage.
In addition to supporting numerous charities and performing at fundraisers, Chapin returned to the United States Air Force Academy to play for the Cadet Wing. His performance was laced with humorous stories of his short stint there.
In the mid 1970s, Chapin focused on his social activism, including raising money to combat hunger in the United States and co-founding the organization World Hunger Year with legendary radio DJ Bill Ayres, before returning to music with On the Road to Kingdom Come. He also released a book of poetry, Looking...Seeing, in 1977. Many of Chapin's concerts were benefit performances (for example, a concert[1] to help save the Landmark Theatre in Syracuse, New York), and sales of his concert merchandise were used to support World Hunger Year.
Chapin's social causes at times caused friction among his band members and manager Fred Kewley. Chapin donated an estimated third of his paid concerts to charitable causes, often performing alone with his guitar to reduce costs.
[edit] Death
On July 16, 1981, Harry Chapin died in an automobile accident when his car was rear ended by a tractor trailer truck on the Long Island Expressway. An autopsy showed that he had suffered a heart attack, but it could not be determined whether that occurred before or after the collision. He had been on his way to perform in a concert in Eisenhower Park in Nassau County. Supermarkets General, the owner of the truck, paid $12 million to his widow in the ensuing litigation. Chapin was only 38 years old.
Chapin was interred in the Huntington Rural Cemetery, Huntington, New York. His epitaph is taken from his song "I Wonder What Would Happen to this World." It is:
- Oh if a man tried
- To take his time on Earth
- And prove before he died
- What one man's life could be worth
- I wonder what would happen
- to this world
[edit] Legacy
On December 7, 1987, Harry Chapin was posthumously awarded the Congressional Gold Medal of Honor for his campaigning on social issues, particularly his highlighting of hunger around the world and in the United States. His work on hunger included being widely recognized as a key player in the creation of the Presidential Commission on World Hunger in 1977.
Chapin often remarked that he came from an artistic family. His father Jim Chapin and brothers Tom Chapin and Steve Chapin are also musicians, as are his daughter, Jen Chapin, and two of his nieces (see the Chapin Sisters). His paternal grandfather was an artist who illustrated Robert Frost's first two books of poetry; his maternal grandfather was the philosopher Kenneth Burke.
A biography of Chapin entitled Taxi: The Harry Chapin Story, by Peter M. Coan, was released following his death. Although Chapin had co-operated with the writer, following his death the family withdrew their support. There is some debate about the accuracy of the details included in the book.
Despite seeming social and political differences with Chapin, Dr. James Dobson often quotes the entirety of "Cat's In The Cradle" to illustrate dynamics of contemporary American families. "Cat's In The Cradle" was also re-recorded by hard rock group Ugly Kid Joe in 1992 and once again topped the charts. A country version was also recorded by Ricky Skaggs in 1995. It was sampled by Darryl McDaniels of Run DMC and Canadian singer Sarah McLachlan in 2006 after the rapper's discovery that he was adopted in infancy.
Harry Chapin was inducted into the Long Island Music Hall of Fame on October 15, 2006.
The rock band M.O.D. wrote an irreverent song about Harry Chapin's death called "Ode To Harry".
[edit] Extended family
Chapin has several notable musicians in his extended family including Jim Chapin, Tom Chapin, Steve Chapin, Jen Chapin, and the Chapin Sisters. Tom and Steve sometimes performed with Harry throughout his career, as is especially evident on the live albums Greatest Stories Live and Legends of the Lost and Found. Chapin's family members and other longtime bandmates have continued to perform together from time to time in the decades since his death.
[edit] Discography
- Chapin Music (1966, Rock-Land Records)
- Heads and Tales (1972, Elektra)
- Sniper and Other Love Songs (1972, Elektra)
- Short Stories (1973, Elektra)
- Verities & Balderdash (1974, Elektra)
- Portrait Gallery (1975, Elektra)
- Greatest Stories Live (Double Album, 1976, Elektra)
- On the Road to Kingdom Come (1976, Elektra)
- Dance Band on the Titanic (Double Album, 1977, Elektra)
- Living Room Suite (1978, Elektra)
- Legends of the Lost and Found (Double Album, 1979, Elektra)
- Sequel (1980, Boardwalk Records)
- Anthology of Harry Chapin (1985, Elektra)
- Remember When the Music (1987, Dunhill Compact Classics)
- The Gold Medal Collection (1988, Elektra)
- The Last Protest Singer (1988, Dunhill Compact Classics)
- The Bottom Line Encore Collection (1998, Bottom Line / Koch)
- Story of a Life (1999, Elektra)
- Heads and Tales / Sniper and Other Love Songs (2004, Elektra. Double CD re-release of first two albums with bonus tracks)
- Introducing: Harry Chapin (2006)
[edit] Video / DVD Releases
- The Book Of Chapin
- You Are The Only Song (also known as The Last Concert)
- Rockpalast Live
- Remember When: The Anthology
[edit] External links
- Website by the Chapin family
- Harry Chapin at the Internet Movie Database
- HarryChapin.com - a fan site
- World Hunger Year website
- Harry Chapin
- The Howie Fields years - The site of Harry's drummer Howie Fields giving details of all the band shows played from 1975 to 1981
Categories: 1942 births | 1981 deaths | American male singers | American songwriters | People from New York | People from New York City | People from Brooklyn | People from Long Island | Congressional Gold Medal recipients | American road accident victims | Entertainers who died in a road accident | Cornell University alumni
