Remembering Harry
Remembering Harry
The late Screenwriter Garson Kanin said that no person is indispensable but some are irreplaceable. Harry Chapin is that. The late singer/song writer and World Hunger Crusader is still with all of us fans who loved him. Known for “Cats in the Cradle” and “Taxi", Harry stays in our heats because of story songs like “Mr. Tanner” and “A Better Place to Be.” Yes. Harry wrote story songs about ordinary people that made us cry. They were story songs that lasted 12 minutes. They were usually too long for the radio and you didn’t play Harry at parties. In fact Rolling Stone Magazine loved to print “The bad Harry Chapin song of the month.” Harry loved that. Like many Boomers who can sing every word of the long version of “American Pie,” I can do that for Harry’s story about the rotund waitress who offers to go home with a midnight watchman after he got dumped by an attractive one night stand companion.
It’s a common practice among Harry fans to to break into “Mr. Tanner was a cleaner from a town in the Midwest and of the cleaning shops around he made his the best…….” It’s funny this song about an amateur singer from Dayton who tried his luck in New York to no avail has a deeper redemption. Harry plunged into our hearts with “He came home to Dayton and was questioned by his friends. He smiled and just said nothing and he never sang again….excepting very late at night when the shop was dark and closed..he sang softly to himself as he sorted through the clothes….” Years later I met a Notre Dame Assistant basketball coach who named his dog Mr. Tanner.
At concerts Harry fans would cheer him out of love for who he was. He touched the little child in us who wanted to hear a story with a happy ending. Harry died in a car wreck on July 16th, 1981. I had every album and was going to see him for the second time in a couple of weeks. 60’s Activist Allard Lowenstein said that Bobby Kennedy’s death is the only death that continues to get worse. That may be true for millions who remember the time. But for Harry Chapin fans like me, there probably isn’t day that I don’t say “Alexa, play “Tangled up Puppet” by Harry Chapin. It’s a song about his daughter growing up too fast. “You are a drawer full of make-up and rinses and things,,,you keep changing your moods like your ear rings and rings..but tonight while we played tag for five minutes in the yard…just for a moment..I caught you off guard.” Thanks Harry.