Today was Any Old Kind of Day. I took a Taxi to Old College Avenue and some Poor Damned Fool was lamenting about The Day They Closed the Factory Down.
He said, "My Old Lady hopped a Greyhound after having a Quiet Little Love Affair with the Pretzel Man. She said 'He's Good to Me' and that there was Only One Choice...toGet on with It."
I Wonder What Would Happen to Him if he were to Stop Singing These Sad Songs...
As I wandered around Dogtown, I was entertained by a Dancin' Boy and a Song Man. Then I spotted a woman I once knew. Her name was Caroline and she was Burning Herself with a lit cigarette. They Call Her Easy as they boast of their Manhood. I wonder why she let her Dreams Go By. In my mind, She is Always Seventeen.
It seems that Everybody's Lonely These Days...
As I continued down the street, a Barefoot Boy was struggling with a Tangled Up Puppet and an Old Folkie was telling Short Stories with his Six String Orchestra. Suddenly, Somebody Said, "A Sniper just took four others with him On the Road to Kingdom Come."
I Wonder What Would Happen to this World if it were a Better Place to Be...
But the Parade's Still Passing By and all I know is I Don't Want to Be President. I just want to wish on a Shooting Star and to live my Country Dreams. I know that somewhere along the way we all Grew Up a Little Bit, but deep inside, I'm still a Woman Child.
I Miss America...the way she used to be.
Though he is probably best known for his 1974 hit "Cat's in the Cradle," all of the underlined phrases in the above passage are songs written and/or recorded by Harry Chapin.
Harry Forster Chapin was born in New York's Greenwich Village on December 7, 1942 to Big Band drummer, Jim Chapin and his wife, Jeanne Elspeth. When his family relocated to the Brooklyn area, he became involved with the Brooklyn Heights Boys Choir and learned to play the trumpet, banjo and guitar. During his teens, he began performing with his brothers. His father would sometimes join them on the drums and years later, his two younger brothers would accompany him as he entertained audiences around the globe.
As a young adult, Harry studied architecture at the Air Force Academy and philosophy at Cornell University, all the while entertaining friends with his folk music. Eventually, he left the university to pursue a career as a film maker. He and associate, Jim Jacobs completed a documentary, entitledLegendary Champions, which won several awards at both the Atlanta and New York film festivals and was also nominated for an Academy Award. During his film-making years, Harry also composed several songs, telling stories with his lyrics...a style which would later become his trade-mark.
Harry often credited radio personality, Jim Connors for the success of his debut album, Heads and Tails after Connors discovered the single Taxi and encouraged other programmers to give the song air time. When Harry performed the song on The Johnny Carson Show, he was asked to return the following evening for an encore performance. Chapin and Connors became good friends and Harry wrote the song W*O*L*D based on Connor's life as a DJ. The song became a hit in the UK and was somewhat instrumental in inspiring the television series, WKRP in Cinncinati.
Harry met his future wife, New York socialite Sandy Gaston, when she contacted Harry for music lessons. They married two years later and together they had two biological children along with Sandy's three children from a previous marriage. Sandy wrote a poem and Harry composed music to accompany it. The result was his only number one hit, Cat's in the Cradle.
While some of Chapin's songs wove tales, others spoke of hardship and strife. Sniper was based on the 1966 Texas University shooting. Throughout the song, he delves into the psychology of the sniper, asking the same questions we ask when such an event occurs today. In The Day They Closed the Factory Down he sings of the factory moving to another town to make shirts for less and a small town slowly dying as a result.
Not only was Harry a performer, but he was a philanthropist. He believed in supporting the Arts and strived to eradicate hunger around the world. During the 1970's, he gave as many as two-hundred performances per year, squeezing benefits in between his already hectic schedule and encouraging other artists to do the same. He lobbied for the U.S. government to pass a resolution for a government commission on world hunger and co-founded the organization World Hunger Year along with Catholic priest and radio personality Bill Ayres (not to be confused with controversial...ahem...political activist, Bill Ayers).
Also to Chapin's credits are a Broadway musical, The Night That Made America Famous and a book of poetry entitled Looking...Seeing.
On July 16, 1981, at the age of 38, Harry's life ended tragically on the Long Island Expressway when a semi-trailer collided with his Volkswagen Rabbit and it burst into flames. Autopsy results would show that he died of cardiac arrest. Erratic driving prior to the collision indicates that he most likely suffered the heart attack prior to the collision.
On December 7, 1987, Harry Chapin was posthumously awarded the Congressional Medal for his charitable work. Today, his music lives on and his work continues through The Harry Chapin Foundation.
I Wonder What Would Happen To This World if we all followed his example...
"Our lives are to be used and thus to be lived as fully as possible, and truly it seems that we are never so alive as when we concern ourselves with other people.†-Harry Chapin
