http://www.nydailynews.com/entertain...ith_a_cau.html
In the music world, there are superstars and there are supernovas. Like the latter, Harry Chapin was a rare phenomenon.
A tireless workhorse, Chapin cranked out one album after another, devoted himself to charity and family, and campaigned to stop world hunger.
The tragic end came 30 years ago this coming Saturday when Chapin — the man behind the iconic tune "Cat's in the Cradle" — died in a car accident on the Long Island Expressway, hours before he was to perform a free concert in Nassau County's Eisenhower Park.
Chapin was only 38, yet he left a cultural legacy worthy of a man twice his age. For family, colleagues and contemporaries, his loss still leaves an emotional void three decades later.
"I will always miss the dialogue that we had because I've never had that experience
since Harry died of just constantly filling up on questions," says Sandy Chapin, 76, about her husband. "Both of us were very interested in trying to figure out [the] history of the moment."
Tom Chapin helped police identify his older brother's body by the watch Harry was wearing, a thank-you gift from then future filmmaker Michael Moore for performing benefit shows for his Flint Voice newspaper in Michigan.
"When Harry died, the universe ... cracked a little bit for us," says Tom Chapin, also a musician. "There were four boys who were very close growing up, and when Harry died it was just like, whoa."
The folky troubadour had a lot to savor in 1981. His single "Sequel" had peaked at 23 on the Billboard chart, one notch higher than its 1972 predecessor, "Taxi." Despite sluggish album sales since 1974's "Verities & Balderdash," the self-described "third-rate folk singer" still filled concert halls and clubs. In January of that year, Chapin performed his 2,000th show at New York's Bottom Line.
"I always wondered where he'd be if he hadn't died because I felt he was still at a crossroads with time," says Chapin's mother, Elspeth Hart, 91.
Harry Chapin closed his shows by singing "All My Life's a Circle." Now, his loved ones and former band mates come full circle by giving a free concert Saturday in Huntington, L.I. (Chapin's longtime home), at Heckscher Park's Chapin Rainbow Stage. The event is sponsored by an organization Chapin founded in 1981, the Long Island Cares food bank.
"There's emotion in that some of the songs still touch a chord, but it's a very joyful celebration," says singer Jen Chapin, 40, Harry youngest daughter. "For us, it's really a chance to have kind of a family reunion."
In addition to an active music career, Chapin, a 1987 Congressional Gold Medal recipient, co-founded World Hunger Year (now known as WhyHunger), a grassroots community outreach organization that has raised close to $14 million toward ending hunger and poverty.
Chapin's humanitarian influence doesn't end there. In the years since his death, the Harry Chapin Foundation, spearheaded by Sandy Chapin, Kenny Rogers and Chapin's second manager, Ken Kragen, has distributed nearly $2 million in grants to 399 arts-in-education,
community education, and agricultural and environmental programs across the country.
Kragen says Chapin's creed of "When in doubt, do something," inspired him to assemble one of the 1980s' most notable anti-poverty musical efforts, "We Are the World."
"I had this weird feeling literally that Harry Chapin had crawled up inside of me and was orchestrating everything that I was doing," Kragen says. "I sort of felt like, ‘Oh my gosh, Harry's running the show here even if he's not alive.' "
The foundation has also unveiled Harry Chapin Radio this year, a free 24/7 online station featuring unreleased concerts and music. In North Carolina, Catawba College has established an endowed scholarship in Chapin's name for music students who show commitment to social activism and community service.
Relatives say Chapin's relevance in the 21st century is both heartwarming and surprising.
"A lot of people have a great life and they are famous for something, but they are soon forgotten," says son Jason, 47. "The fact that he's remembered by so many people and appreciated by so many people years after he's died is just sometimes very hard to believe."
A barefoot musician is playing near the Hudson Piers one Friday night. One song in his repertoire stands out from his Steve Miller Band and Simon & Garfunkel covers. It's a seven-minute Harry Chapin tune about a devastating building fire called "What Made America Famous."
"Mostly I write in a conversational storytelling way and Harry did, too. He was exactly the opposite of Bob Dylan," says David Ippolito, aka "That Guitar Man from Central Park." "At the end of a Bob Dylan song you say, ‘That was great, what?' At the end of a Chapin song you say, ‘That was great, oh!' "
With only four top 40 hits in a decade-long career, Harry Chapin stood apart from most chart toppers. He didn't write singles; he penned tales — stories about a vulnerable disk jockey ("W-O-L-D"), a Midwestern singing cleaner ("Mr. Tanner"), even a gunman desperate for human acceptance ("Sniper"). "I think that's what made it for his audience, the characters that he could relate to. Characters that very often were faced with situations that had few or no reasonable options," says Chapin's drummer Howard Fields.
Chapin was groomed to think outside the box artistically. His maternal grandfather was philosopher and theorist Kenneth Burke. His father was renowned jazz drummer Jim Chapin.
"He was always a super salesman when it came to most everything, but especially in putting his songs across and making the listener just get into it," says his first manager, Fred Kewley. "He wasn't background music in any way."
"He had just a great personality. He was great with people, and he was a conversationist of great skill," adds musician Gordon Lightfoot. "It had a lot to do with his personality ... and the way he related to his fans. He treated his fans very well."
Chapin's lone number one hit, "Cat's in the Cradle," is now in the Grammy Hall of Fame. Chapin would claim the tune was written about him, when in fact Sandy Chapin penned the lyrics about her first husband.
"It was a message to [Harry], but she wrote it as a poem about her first husband's relationship with his father. ... So my dad saw it and it obviously helps him to resonate with the audience if he says it's about him," says Chapin's youngest son, Josh, 38. "It's not, but obviously there's something about him singing it that makes it real."
An Air Force Academy and Cornell dropout, and Academy Award-nominated documentary filmmaker, Chapin generated a record company bidding war between the Elektra and Columbia labels after playing one Greenwich Village venue in the summer of 1971. Elektra founder Jac Holzman won by offering free studio time and producing Chapin's debut album.
Chapin was already 30 when he hit the charts, yet he released 11 albums and wrote two theatrical productions before his death less than a decade later. In the latter half of his career, Chapin hopscotched around the world to address the growing concern of world hunger, performing a combination of regular and benefit concerts, while also urging Jimmy Carter to create a presidential commission on the issue.
"He'd walk into a congressman's office ... and he would just say, ‘You and I both know hunger is wrong, it's immoral, it's crazy. We don't have to have it. ... Would you sign on to this Presidential Hunger Commission?' " says Bill Ayres, now 70, who co-founded Chapin's anti-hunger organization. "A lot of them did because they liked him and they believed in the cause. Some of them, I think, did it because they just wanted to get rid of him."
Long before the words Bono and Live Aid had seeped into public consciousness, there was Harry Chapin and World Hunger Year.
In response to famine in Bangladesh, Chapin and Ayres, a radio talk-show host, sought to educate others about, and create solutions to, hunger and poverty by asking "Why" questions.
"The root cause of hunger is poverty and the root cause of poverty is powerlessness,
so we're always trying to work with community-based organizations that are helping people to become empowered and become self-reliant. Those two things go together," says Ayres.
Three-plus decades since its inception, WhyHunger works with more than 8,000 community-based organizations to secure food, jobs and governmental assistance for those in need. Successful partnerships have included the Hard Rock Cafe, Bruce Springsteen and Yoko Ono.
His former colleagues still marvel at Harry Chapin's energy when it came to causes he believed in.
"He was always up," says folk legend Oscar Brand, 91. "Without question, you could feel he was wrapped in electricity and excitement."
"It was kind of a 24-hour a day herding cats, trying to keep Harry where he was supposed to be, which was a lot of fun," adds Chapin's former business manager Don Ruthig. "There was never a dull moment."
For more information, visit whyhunger.org, youtube.com/whyhunger, or call 1-866-3-HUNGRY. The free concert "Harry Chapin: A Celebration in Song" will be held Saturday at 8:30 p.m. at the Chapin Rainbow Stage, Heckscher Park, Huntington, L.I.
Jen Chapin holds son Van and photo of herself with dad Harry Chapin, pictured in 1973.
Elspeth Hart, 91, says her son was at a 'crossroads with time' when he died.
Lightfoot remembers Harry Chapin 30 years after his death-July 2011
- Borderstone
