Harry Chapin - Biography
Singer/songwriter Harry Chapin looked like he was going to have a long and glorious career. With his first album, Heads & Tales (1972 Elektra), he received a Best New Artist Grammy nomination and Verities and Balderdash (1974 Elektra), his fifth effort, became a top 10 gold album. In 1975 Chapin won an Emmy for his music on the ABC television series Make a Wish. He then co-founded World Hunger Year (WHY), a foundation that raised almost half-a-million dollars for famine relief in its first year of operation. Chapin’s career was cut tragically short when his car exploded after being hit by a truck on the Long Island Expressway. He was 40-years-old.
Chapin was born in New York in 1942, and he grew up in a bohemian family in Greenwich Village. His father played jazz drums with Jimmy Dorsey and Woody Herman and was rarely home, thus leading to his family falling apart. His mother and siblings moved in with his grandfather in Brooklyn and the Chapin boys discovered folk music. With Harry and Tom on guitar and Steve on banjo and bass, The Chapin Brothers started performing. They got good enough to play society dances and parties before Harry graduated and was accepted into the Air Force Academy.
His time at Air Force didn’t last long, as Chapin quit and proceeded to spend a year attending Cornell. Not the scholarly type, he left college and went to work at Drew Associates, a movie production company where he eventually became an Assistant Film Editor. Still in his formative years, in 1963 Chapin fell in love, re-enrolled at Cornell before promptly breaking up with his girlfriend and dropping out of college for good.
In 1965, with his father now on drums, The Chapin Brothers were reborn as a jazzy folk-rock band. Less than a year later, Tom and Steve got drafted and enrolled in college full-time, rather than get shipped to Vietnam. Once again, Chapin found himself on his own.
He got another job in the film industry and made a boxing documentary—The Legendary Champions—that was nominated for an Academy Award in the Best Documentary Feature category. Chapin married, worked as a freelance documentary filmmaker and made industrial promos for major corporations, and all the while he kept writing songs.
In the early 1970s, The Chapin Brothers—Tom and Steve—reformed as a duo and started performing some of Harry’s songs. They rented the Village Gate for ten weeks in 1971, which was one of New York’s hippest clubs at the time. Harry opened the shows for The Chapin Brothers, the first night drawing only a dozen people. By the end of the run, however, the Village Gate was packed and record labels were dangling contracts.
Harry ended up signing with Elektra and released Heads & Tales (1972 Elektra). The album was full of ambitious production and introspective songwriting, and it received a Grammy nomination. The first single from the album, “Taxi,” clocked in at almost seven minutes long, and nevertheless became an FM radio hit. On the strength of that single and a couple declaratory numbers like “Dogtown” and “Any Old Kind of Day” made him a star.
Chapin’s years as a filmmaker gave him an eye for careful detail. His songs had a cinematic flavor, richly detailed portraits of people and situations that won critical kudos for their melodic and emotional flow. Sniper and Other Love Songs (1972 Elektra) showed Chapin glowing as a composer and lyricist, while Short Stories (1973 Elektra) included the hit “W.O.L.D.” and was bedrocked with a dour worldview.
Verities and Balderdash (1974 Elektra) included the #1 hit single “Cat’s in the Cradle” and was balanced between personal and political songs. It went gold, but Chapin let go of his backing band to concentrate on a musical he was writing at the time, The Night That Made America Famous. The production closed after 75 performances, although it did garner a couple of Tony nominations for its cast members.
Portrait Gallery (1975 Elektra) was another glimpse at America’s dark side, and it received good reviews—yet the album didn’t fare well commercially. That changed with Greatest Stories—Live ! (1976 Elektra), a double-album of Chapin’s best songs that went gold. Chapin started a charity with his father Bill Ayes in 1973 called World Hunger Year (WHY), a non-profit dedicated to alleviating world hunger through fund-raising and political action. It became a major part of Chapin’s life, and he found it gratifying. By the mid-’70s, he was spending as much time doing work for WHY as he did performing and when Chapin did perform, he donated half of his earnings to humanitarian causes. He would end up giving more than five million dollars to causes in his short career.
Just as the disco era went full swing, On the Road to Kingdom Come (1976 Elektra) came out and was one of Chapin’s most rock-oriented albums. It was another strong collection of songs full of sly wit and soaring melodies, both of which were a tribute to Chapin’s songcraft.
Dance Band on the Titanic (1977 Elektra) may be his masterpiece—a double-album that ranges the signature Chapin gamut from cinematic orchestrations to quiet acoustic numbers. That year Chapin met with President Jimmy Carter to discuss the need for a Presidential Commission on Hunger, which Carter eventually created. The President also appointed Chapin to the Commission.
Chapin finished his stay at Elektra with the timeless music of Living Room Suite (1978 Elektra) and Legends of the Lost and Found (1980/1990 Elektra). Sequel (1980, Boardwalk) included the hit “Sequel” which revisited the characters in his first hit, “Taxi,” nearly a decade later. The song was a hit and Sequel remained on the charts for over a year.
In 1981, Chapin, who was driving without a license due to previous moving violations, was rear-ended by a tractor/trailer. The vehicle he was driving exploded and he perished in the flames at the age of 40. In the weeks after he died nine senators and 30 congressmen paid tribute to the late artist-cum-philanthropist on the floor of congress. In his memory, Chapin’s family founded The Harry Chapin Memorial Fund to continue his charitable work.
