The Bottom Line: Harry Chapin was a remarkable songwriter and a good singer. This boxset honors Chapin the humanitarian by presenting many of his best songs. It is a worthy tribute.
quasar's Full Review: The Gold Medal Collection by Harry Chapin
I was in Graduate School. I had a reader who came to my apartment and noticed my extensive record and CD collection including a lot of Peter, Paul and Mary, Simon & Garfunkel, and Joan Baez. She asked me if I liked Harry Chapin. I kind of looked at her funny and said "Who's that?" She told me he was a folk singer she thought I would like and offered to let me borrow her boxset. I found some familiar songs I already loved like Taxi and Cat's in the Cradle and new songs like Flowers are Red and W*O*L*D I immediately enjoyed. Mere days later I bought my own copy of The Gold Medal Collection.
I'm not sure how Harry Chapin had escaped my notice that long. I guess because until I went to college most of my recorded material came from my parents' record collections and neither had an album by Chapin (although they have both since told me they are fans and in fact went to one of his concerts). He wasn't played much on the radio, not even on those stations that did play oldies and folk. I may be a late comer to the Chapin bandwagon, but I am a loud supporter now.
Disc One
1. Taxi
2. Sunday Morning Sunshine
3. Old College Avenue
4. Dirty Old Man
5. I Wanna Learn A Love Song
6. Cat's In The Cradle
7. Tangled Up Puppet
8. Dancing Boy
9. Thanksgiving Hunger Drives
10. Flowers Are Red
11. She Sings Songs Without Words
12. Shooting Star
13. Winter Song
14. Story Of A Life
15. Commitment & Pete Seeger
16. There Was Only One Choice
Most of my favorites are on this disc and I listen to it much more often than the second. A mix of well known Chapin songs, spoken clips, and some lesser known songs, this disc feels homey and personal. I feel like I have my nose pressed to a window looking in at his soul. Chapin's enthusiasm for the things he believed in were quite obvious in both the songs and especially the spoken tracks.
Favorite Tracks: Taxi, Thanksgiving Hunger Drives, Flowers are Red
Taxi was Chapin's first hit and one of the best story songs ever written. It weaves a plaintive tale of first love and the dreams of youth, and how things don't always turn out as we plan. It highlights that sometimes practicality overrides pride, and that you have to learn to not just accept but enjoy what life brings your way:
You see, she was gonna be an actress
And I was gonna learn to fly.
She took off to find the footlights,
And I took off for the sky.
It isn't often you see spoken tracks mixed in with songs on an album, and certainly not tracks as powerful as Thanksgiving Hunger Drives. This is Chapin at his idealistic enthusiastic best - explaining his plans on how to educate children about the problems of world hunger and how they should help solve this epidemic. If I had to pick one track that embodies who Chapin was, this would be it.
Flowers are Red is the Chapin song I most closely identify with. The story of how a young boy's creativity was stiffled by a teacher insisting he conform to the expected way of doing things, so much so that later when another teacher asked for creativity he was not able to produce anything but the boring norm. As someone who was boxed into the expected much more than I liked as a young student, someone who struggled to maintain my own sense of self and my own way of doing things, someone who realizes that she passed her peak of creativity at age 13 or thereabouts and has been going downhill since, this song hits very close to home:
Flowers are red young man
Green leaves are green
There's no need to see flowers any other way
Than they way they always have been seen
Worst Track: none
I can honestly say I like every track on this album. I could chose the song I like the least if really pressed, but it would still be a song I liked, and I don't want to give any song on this album the connotation of being the "worst" track.
Disc Two
1. A Better Place To Be
2. Mail Order Annie
3. Performing
4. W*O*L*D*
5. Mr. Tanner
6. Corey's Coming
7. A Child Is Born
8. Sniper
9. Calluses
10. The Rock
11. Danceband On The Titanic
12. I Wonder What Would Happen To This World
13. Sequel
14. My Grandfather
15. Remember When The Music (Reprise)
16. Circle
This disc is filled with many shorter story songs as well as a few longer more typical Chapin songs. Like the first disc there are also spoken tracks throughout. This set seems a little less personal but it is still powerful, telling the stories of other folks, each song highlighting some facet of society and its interactions with individuals.
Favorite Tracks: W*O*L*D*, Circle
W*O*L*D* is the closest thing to a rock song in this collection. Even so, it maintains the personal feel that runs through many autobiographical Chapin songs. This is a song about life as a nomad, a life that frequently leads to separation from family, a life familiar to all who perform professionally, be they DJs or singers or actors, a life that requires putting on a happy face no matter how lonely or sad you get:
I am the morning DJ on W*O*L*D
Playing all the hits for you wherever you may be
The bright good-morning voice who's heard but never seen
Feeling all of forty-five going on fifteen
Circle has a little bit of everything. The start has the feel of a rock ballad, but suddenly in the middle of the song the song stops and Chapin starts an impassioned speech about his favorite topic - the plight of the hungry and how it is up to each of us to help solve this problem, including a very amusing bit about selling "Harry You Suck" T-Shirts for the cause. Then it's back to the song, but this time as a sing along featuring various members of Chapin's band including brother Steve. Circle explores the cycles of life - seasons, years, patterns, ups and downs:
No straight lines make up my life;
And all my roads have bends;
There's no clear-cut beginnings;
And so far no dead-ends.
Worst Track: Sequel
By all rights I should like Sequel but I don't. Picking up where Taxi ends, to the extreme of starting with the last lines of the original, the melodies and themes are similar. Maybe they are too similar. Instead of the stoned Taxi driver, now our protagonist is successful and returning to check on his lost love who has lost her social position but seems all the happier for it. It covers many of the same themes as the original, with the added irony of reversal between the two characters:
So I thought about her as I sang that night
And how the circle keeps rolling around.
How I act as I'm facing the footlights
And how she's flying with both feet on the ground.
Chapin the Songwriter
Harry Chapin was an amazing songwriter. He had a way of taking personal stories and making them universal, personal to all who hear them. His best songs are story songs, often long, never fitting the mold of what society considers a great song. Many of them are moralistic, trying to point out the many ills of the world. His words are often thought provoking, frequently ironic, and sometimes witty. He is at heart a troubadour, traveling around parading
The Voice
Harry Chapin's voice is powerful yet at the same time wispy. It is a deep baritone, sometimes grainy sometime sweet. It may not be a traditionally great voice, but Chapin makes up for that with his ability to evoke emotion with every note.
Liner Notes
The liner notes are sparse, consisting of one page outlining why this boxset was produced (see below) and some listed information about each song within. There are also four pictures of Harry. The liner notes are certainly nothing special.
What's Missing?
Although this is a superb collection of Chapin songs, my favorite song is not in this collection. Written in tribute to Phil Ochs on his death, The Parade Passes By is a plaintive clever song that plays off the titles of several Ochs songs to weave a most fitting memorial. Although in no way a hit, it's hard for me to think of a Chapin collection being complete without its presence.
More than Just a Greatest Hits Album
The Gold Medal Collection is more than just a greatest hits album. Produced posthumously, it commemorates Chapin's receipt of the highest honor that can be bestowed on a civilian in the United States, the Special Congressional Gold Medal. Chapin became only the 115th person to receive this award since its inception in 1776. It was given to honor his tireless work to rid the world of hunger. More than half of Chapin's concerts each year were benefits for hunger-related causes. He also frequently lobbied Congress to pass bills to improve the plight of the poor. Chapin was a great singer, but he was an even greater human.
This review is part of a writeoff honoring Harry Chapin on the 20th anniversary of his death on July 16, 1981. Please read the tributes of these other wonderful writers:
frazzledspice
Horswispr
KCFoxy
Harry, you made the world a better place and you are missed.
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