Artist: Harry Chapin
Album: Some More Stories Live
Label: MiG Music
Release Date: 2.28.2020
Harry Chapin told stories. In three to six minutes, this multitalented student of the human condition could paint bittersweet portraits so vivid that his characters became recognizable to us all. Killed at 38 in a fiery car crash not far from his home, Chapin left 11 albums—his first, Heads & Tales, being a multi-million dollar contract, one of the biggest of its time—and a long history of good deeds to remember him by. Among his many awards and commendations, Chapin was posthumously awarded the Congressional Gold Medal for his humanitarian work, on what would have been his 45th birthday.
As Louis Armstrong and Bob Dylan proved before him, if you’ve got the music, you don’t have to be a marvelous vocalist, and singing was not Chapin’s strong suit. This album shows off his songs, his stories, his band—which includes his musician brother Steve Chapin and cellist Kim Scholes—and the fascinating backstories of each of the 14 songs he delivered to an obviously adoring crowd in Germany.
Many of the tunes in this concert were never released as singles, so at least some will be new to all but the most ardent Chapin fans, and we all get a bit of interesting backstory for each. He explains to his German audience, for example, the practice of mail-order brides solicited by lonely frontier settlers in his introduction to “Mail Order Annie.” Interestingly, he might not have to explain that concept quite so fully today, since the same practice continues for different reasons, but that’s one of Chapin’s storytelling strengths: he brings universal truths down to the individual level, and introduces us to those characters personally, making them—and the truths they represent—a part of our lives.
—Suzanne Cadgène
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