Today would have been Harry Chapin's 80th birthday. Between 1972 and 1981, Chapin released 11 albums (including 2 live albums), performed hundreds of concerts a year (many of them benefits) and, in what spare time he had, managed to convince President Carter to to establish a Presidential Commission on World Hunger.
In honor of this occasion, I want to highlight eight of his essential songs. These aren't necessarily my favorite Chapin songs, but they are pivotal in understanding his music.
1. Taxi
Well, this happens to be not only my favorite Harry Chapin song, but my favorite song period. Of course, Taxi was the song which would gain Chapin international prominence as a recording artist from his 1972 debut album Heads & Tales. This song about a cab driver meeting his long lost love who has made it as an actress took the story song genre and spun it on its ears. Eight years later, Chapin would release a second part to the song fittingly called "Sequel" which was the title track of his final album released in 1980.
"Taxi", like many of Chapin's songs, possesses a cinematic quality. This is fitting considering Chapin directed the 1968 documentary Legendary Champions which earned him an Academy Award nomination. The icing on top is the bridge which features a falsetto from Chapin's childhood friend and long time bass player "Big" John Wallace.
2. Sniper
The title track from Chapin's follow up album Sniper & Other Love Songs (also released in 1972), "Sniper" is loosely based on the 1966 University of Texas tower shooting which claimed the lives of 14 people and is largely told from the point of view of the shooter though it is clear in the rendering that whatever legitimate gripes he might have had against the world, he took the wrong action and had to be stopped. At the time that Chapin wrote the song, mass shootings were an infrequent occurrence in the United States. Had he lived I cannot help but wonder how he would have viewed it and if it would have been compelled to write a sequel as he did for "Taxi".
3. Mr. Tanner
Originally released in 1973 on his third album Short Stories, it enjoyed a prominent place on Chapin's 1976 double live album Greatest Stories Live and would be a staple of his concert repertoire. As with "Taxi", "Big" John Wallace plays a prominent role in this song only this time as a baritone singing "O Holy Night" in the background.
Chapin found the inspiration for "Mr. Tanner" in a New York Times review of a baritone named Martin Tubridy who rented out Carnegie Hall to sing in a performance which was not well received. But this sad song would come full circle and have a happy ending. In 2016, the Harry Chapin Band invited Tubridy to perform "Mr. Tanner" at a show in Connecticut and he received a rapturous standing ovation.
The centerpiece of Chapin's 1974 album Verities & Balderdash, "Cats in The Cradle" would become Chapin's only number one hit and it remains a staple of soft rock and adult oriented rock stations nearly 50 years after its release.
Originally written as a poem by Chapin's widow, Sandy, it tells the story of a father and son never being able to connect. She had brought it to his attention on several occasions but he had resisted it until their marriage began to have its challenges. Chapin gave it a second look and it would prove the wisest decision Chapin ever gave.
While it was recorded for Verities & Balderdash, it came alive on Greatest Stories Live. Based on the true story of a truck driver who was actually killed driving a rig full of 30,000 pounds of bananas this would become Chapin's most popular song at his concerts because of the multiple endings involved with the song complete with audience participation particularly when they proclaimed after each of his endings, "Harry, It Sucks!!!"
6. Circle
First appearing on Sniper & Other Love Songs, this song too would take on a new life after it appeared on Greatest Stories Live. Indeed, "Circle" would end each of Chapin's concerts and would often have non-singing band members and road crew help sing a verse to amplify the theme that we're all in this together.
At just over 14 minutes, this is the longest song in Chapin's catalogue. The climax of his ambitious 1977 double album Dance Band on The Titanic, "There Was Only One Choice" chronicles the corruption of the music business and America at large and the struggle to uphold one's integrity. The most haunting lyric of this song (or any Chapin song including "Sniper") was how Chapin seemingly foretold his early demise:
When I started this song I was still 33The age that Mozart died and sweet Jesus was set freeKeats and Shelley too soon finished, Charley Parker would beAnd I fantasized some tragedy be soon curtailing me
Less than four years after the release of Dance Band on The Titanic, Chapin would tell stories no more.
8. I Wonder What Would Happen To This World
A standout on his 1978 album Living Room Suite, "I Wonder What Would Happen To This World" has a strong gospel tone thanks to backup vocals by the Dixie Hummingbirds who had five years earlier sang on Paul Simon's "Love Me Like a Rock". This song asks very big questions. Chapin pointedly asks, "If an answer ever found us, would we change things? Or are we just a people rotten ready for the ground?"
I don't know the answer to that, but perhaps the best tribute we can give to Harry Chapin is to keep asking the question.
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