It is amazing to discover how many different people have taken the very same photo as the one that sits atop this post. It is just another exit on the Long Island Expressway for most commuters. But for Harry Chapin fans, Exit 40 is hallowed ground. It was near this spot on the busy Long Island Expressway that a thirty-eight year old Chapin was driving along in his small Volkswagen car when he suffered a medical incident (possibly a heart attack) that caused his car to swerve from the left hand “fast” lane into the centre lane and then back into the left lane again. As Chapin swerved from lane to lane, the speed of his car rapidly decreased causing him to be struck from behind by a transport truck traveling at the speed limit. The collison sparked a fire that engulfed Chapin’s small car. Although he was rescued by the driver of the truck and another passerby, Chapin had passed away by the time he arrived at the closest hospital. Chapin’s death brought to an end a career that saw him release some of the most noteworthy folk songs of the 1970s. However, his death also had a positive spinoff in that support for activist causes that Chapin was passionate about, such as alleviating hunger and poverty in America, gained traction on a national scale. To this day, The Harry Chapin Foundation raises money for causes close to Chapin’s heart. But who exactly was Harry Chapin, and why are his fans so passionate about his music and his activism? Please join me as we discover more about one of music’s greatest storytellers. Here is Harry Chapin’s story.
Harry Chapin was born in 1942 in New York City. His father was a drummer in the orchestra of Big Band leader Woody Herman and often traveled across the country. Chapin’s parents divorced when he was still a boy, with him and his brothers being raised by his mom. As teenagers, the Chapin brothers formed a musical group, but as Harry left high school, he developed other interests that caused him to lose his spot in the family band. For a while, Chapin enlisted in the Air Force. He also attended Cornell University. He didn’t complete his training in the Air Force nor at Cornell and soon found himself playing in bands in NYC. He came to the attention of record executives with Columbia and Elektra Records, eventually signing a record deal with Elektra that was suitably impressive for someone with as little musical experience as Chapin. Harry Chapin began releasing records on Elektra that were filled with songs that often read as poetry, many of which were autobiographical and told stories about his life and his loves. His first big hit in the U.S. was a song simply called “Taxi”. It was a song that told the story of a man who was struggling to make a buck. This man (maybe Chapin, himself?) decided to take out a cab license in order to help pay the rent. One day Chapin’s taxi driving narrator picks up a fare that turns out to be a long lost love. This woman’s life had turned out differently than it was when Harry knew her because she had married a wealthy, older man. As Chapin’s story song unfolds, the two people are left to ponder the twists and turns of life and who is the happier for the result. “Taxi” proved to be such a well-received song that Chapin was pressured by fans to resolve the story line, which he did with a song from his final album called “Sequel”. In that song, Harry played himself as a successful singer who tracks down his long lost love again, arriving in a hired taxi only to discover that their roles had reversed over time, and now she is the one who is divorced and down on her luck and he is the one with money and fame.
While “Taxi” helped launch Chapin’s career into the national spotlight, it was a song about parenting that made him a star for the ages. Three years into his record deal with Elektra, Harry Chapin released an album called Verities and Balderdash. On that album was a song called “Cat’s in the Cradle”. This song was inspired by a poem that Chapin’s wife, Sandy, had written while married to another man prior to meeting Harry. In that poem, Sandy describes the relationship between her husband at the time and her father-in-law. The story she shared is one in which her father-in-law was a politician who was always too busy to actually be a father to his son while the son was still a child growing up. The poem took the relationship through the various stages of life from childbirth, to childhood, to adolescence, to young adulthood and then to old age. In the final stanza of Sandy’s poem, the father-in-law has now retired and asks to visit his son, who is now an adult with a career of his own. The old man’s request is rebuffed by the son, who is now the one who is too busy to spend time with his dad. All throughout the poem, the son had stated that he wanted to grow up to be just like his dad. Well in the end, he did that very thing. Harry Chapin was shown this poem as he was collecting and organizing writing ideas for his fourth album. He thought that his wife’s poem was a stylistic match for the types of songs he was singing and agreed to record it. It ended up going all the way to #1 on the charts and has become the song by which Chapin is most known. Chapin had always remarked that the poem given to him by his wife helped to make him a better, more attentive and involved father to his own children, and for that he was always very grateful.
While none of his other songs reached the heights that “Cat’s in the Cradle” did, Harry Chapin still made his mark on the music scene in the U.S. because of his passion for social justice and political activism. Chapin was a man who quickly came to realize that he had a platform from which to attempt to create change in society. One of the things that bothered him most was seeing so many of his fellow citizens struggling to put food on the table and a roof over their heads. He claimed that it was a national embarrassment for anyone living in the “land of riches” that was America to be starving. So Chapin began advocating for an end to hunger. In order to put his money where his mouth was, Chapin began a policy of taking all of the revenue for every second show he performed and donating the entire proceeds to his foundation. Fortunately for Chapin, the establishment of the Harry Chapin Foundation came about at the same time as America elected the most compassionate president of my lifetime, Jimmy Carter. President Carter invited Chapin to the White House to discuss the issue of hunger. As a result of those conversations, Carter established the Presidential Commission on World Hunger. Chapin continued hosting benefit concerts to raise money for this cause right up until the time of his death. Since then, The Harry Chapin Foundation has continued to raise funds, and in this way, Chapin’s impact as a performer and as an activist has continued for almost half a century now. In 1987 he was posthumously awarded The Congressional Gold Medal for his philanthropic efforts over the years. Perhaps the most well-known example of how Chapin’s humanitarian efforts carried on after his death came in the form of the supergroup U.S.A. for Africa. One of the American organizers of this response to Bob Geldof’s UK group Band Aid was none other than Harry Chapin’s former manager Ken Kragen. During the Philadelphia portion of the LIve Aid super concert, singer Kenny Loggins (who had been a vocal advocate for ending hunger, too) was presented with the very first Harry Chapin Humanitarian Award. Since then a total of twenty Harry Chapin Humanitarian Awards have been bestowed upon people striving to make hunger a thing of the past.
Throughout a career that lasted barely longer than a decade, Harry Chapin has sold over sixteen million albums worldwide. He has been nominated for a variety of Grammy awards (winning two). He had a #1 hit with “Cat’s in the Cradle” and has had that song placed in the Library of Congress. He has also had the song inducted into the Rock n’ Roll Hall of Fame in the Songwriting category. However, despite the professional accolades, I think it is safe to say that what Harry Chapin’s legacy will mostly be known for is his willingness to devote himself and his position in the national spotlight to the benefit of those less fortunate than he was. Harry Chapin sang songs about being a father, a lover and a friend. He wrote about the importance of imagination in songs such as “Flowers Are Red” (which every educator should have pinned to their own bulletin board work space). But more than anything else, Harry Chapin cared about making the world better. I commend him for those efforts. That the world remains plagued by inequity and injustice is not because people like Harry Chapin didn’t try his best to light the way forward. One thing that I will say about our world is that role models are hard to come by. God bless Greta Thunberg and Malala before her. But where are the rest of the lions today? If you need an answer to the question as to why so many people take that same photo of Exit #40 on the Long Island Expressway, it’s because our world still needs people who care more about others than they do about profits or power or political agendas. Harry Chapin was one of those people who cared. He is missed. That’s why people take photos of a highway sign. Rest in peace, Mr. Chapin. May peace be yours now and forever more.
PS: The idea for this post came as a result of a conversation that I witnessed between two friends of mine named Kathleen Gray and John Barr. Thanks to both of you for the passion you hold regarding Harry Chapin, his music and his philanthropic legacy. For the rest of you who are reading these words, let this be a reminder that I do take requests for posts. If you have a certain song, artist or band that you would like to see profiled…any era, any genre…let me know and I will do my best to honour your request just as I did for John and Kathleen.
The link to the official website for the Harry Chapin Foundation can be found here.
The link to the video for the song “Cat’s in the Cradle” by Harry Chapin can be found here. ***The lyrics version is here.
If interested, there is a computer simulation of the accident that took the life of Harry Chapin. As ghoulish as this may sound, it is a straight-forward factual retelling of the event using animated crash test dummies to stand in for people. I imagine it would be the sort of thing that is shown at court trials to explain to a jury how a specific incident may have unfolded. There is no gore and no actual photos of the crash scene. If you wish to gain a better understanding of how Harry Chapin died, the link to the video is here.
***As always, all original content contained within this post remains the sole property of the author. No portion of this post shall be reblogged, copied or shared in any manner without the express written consent of the author. ©2024 http://www.tommacinneswriter.com