On MUSIC

...Chapin has already, by the way, had a good deal of experience in movies: Before even beginning his full-time career as a pop star, he had established himself as a filmmaker...

...Their melodies are simple, their performances are low-key and their songs of love and pain are intensely personal...

...And since his success as a songwriter-singer he has re-dipped his toe into the turbid cinematic waters, writing the score for a film that was never made and the script for one that did not go anywhere either...

...Like a number of composers (Kris Kristofferson and Tom T. Hall come to mind), Chapin tends to use a few basic melodies over and over...

...He was something new...

...Whatever he eventually decides, an album like Greatest Stories: Live demonstrates the progress made by Chapin and the modest counter-movement he represents...

...Bummer," a variation on the theme, is tough stuff, delivered atypically with all the stops out...

...Yet, good as they are, none of his studio albums succeed in getting that across...

...Harry Chapin may not be the king of them, but he is somehow representative of this group of highly individualistic troubadors, an artistic common denominator of sorts...

...Even the idea of someone performing his own compositions was a novelty: With the exception of Hoagy Carmichael, who was kind of a joke, nobody had ever done both—nobody, that is, until Bob Dylan whined and snuffled his way into the hearts of millions...

...and "Bummer," the major effort on the album, would have been a sure bet for the top of the charts if 10-minute singles were a possibility...

...Harry Chapin's current double album, Greatest Stories: Live (Electra 7E-20009), finally captures the electricity of his performances without (as is sometimes the case with on-the-spot recordings) much of a sacrifice in musical quality...

...Chapin's last studio LP, Portrait Gallery, continued in the same vein as his earlier work and managed to maintain the same high standards, despite the fact that a few of the songs were disconcertingly similar...

...Here, too, I have the impression that a few set backs won't deter for too long the ideas and ambitions of this very versatile and remarkably talented young man...

...Tanner," the presentations are superior to the original studio versions...

...It's a good, gripping story, harking back to the Jimmy Cagney movies of the '30s, the ones where the veteran comes back from World War I infected with the killer instinct and turns to crime...

...But 1 could have done without the clowning on "Circle" (too pretty a song for that kind of treatment) and "3,000 Pounds of Bananas...

...This sort of musical horseplay never seems to translate very well when recorded...

...In addition to everything else, Chapin is an excellent performer...

...People like Laura Nyro, Dory Previn, Randy Newman, Joni Mitchell, the late Jim Croce (before he hit it big and lost his originality), Carole Hall, and Harry Chapin, after all, have little in common with Dylan or his latter day incarnation, Bruce Springsteen...

...Pop music may never be the same by the time they have finished with it...

...Although the material was really excerpted from three separate West Coast concerts, there is such consistency and unity to the whole that it gives the listener a feeling of being right there experiencing a single live show...

...But that is hardly something to complain about...

...One of his documentaries, Legendary Champions, was shown at the New York and Atlanta film festivals and received an Academy Award nomination...

...Unfortunately, it failed to make Harry Chapin famous as a writer for the stage and closed after a short run...

...Tangled up Puppet," written with his wife, Sandy, is a fine expression of the awkward feelings of young love...

...For this reason, what is essentially a "greatest hits" retrospective could well turn out to be his biggest seller to date...

...Given the dramatic quality of his work, it is not surprising that Chapin tried his hand at a theatrical piece last year, a kind of Broadway chamber musical he called The Night That Made America Famous...

...Verities & Balderdash brought us "Cat's in the Cradle" and "I Want to Learn a Love Song...

...Good songs all, so much better than the usual top-40 trash it seems a wonder they made it...

...An army of young minstrels has followed Dylan's lead, combining intelligent lyrics that go far beyond a "moon-June" rhyme with the style and attack of rock...

...Nevertheless, on the whole it is a fine set...

...As for the songs, what may have come across before as excessively literary is heard here as successfully dramatic...

...I'm not complaining too bitterly about that—we can't all be Mozarts, or even Sondheims—but when the same tune shows up in three successive songs, "Star Tripper," "Babysitter" and "Someone Keeps Calling My Name," with only minor variations, the effect becomes a bit repetitious...

...The ones who interest me, however, march to a different drummer, one with a lighter beat...

...It shows, too, that the quality shared by him and his fellow chansonniers are intelligence and a greater emotional subtlety than we are used to finding in the popular song...

...Sandy" is, for Chapin, an unusually lyrical piece...

...But if you have ever seen one of his frequent Carnegie Hall or campus appearances, you know he is a dynamic singer who can move an audience with subtle nuances and shout with the best of them when the moment demands...

...Chapin, Previn, Nyro and the rest manage to wring music of unusual intensity from the old familiar structures and formulas...

...It offers a side of the performer—energetic, funny, uninhibited—never before captured on vinyl...

...At least someone could have taken a bit more care in programming...

...the lilting "Dreams Go By" was a hit for him and was picked up by other artists...

...On Music A STORYTELLER IN SONG BY BRUCE COOK When rock released American popular music from the tyranny of Tin Pan Alley in the mid-'50s, the benefits to be derived from the liberation were not immediately apparent...

...It would not be surprising if Chapin decided to move off in some completely new direction—musical or otherwise—before boredom sets in or he runs out of stories to tell...

...Clearly, though, his eye is still fixed in that direction and he will probably try again...

...The audience helps by responding directly and drawing Chapin out...

...Since his first album, Heads and Tales, was released in 1971, Chapin has turned out a steady stream of the musical stories and unique dramatic monologues he is best known for...

...He makes everything seem so easy, in fact, that one wonders just how long he will be satisfied working the little plot he has staked out for himself...

...In a number of instances, like "W*O*L*D" and "Mr...

...Taxi," a song about a stoned cab driver who picks up an old love as a fare, was the hit that brought him to public notice (and also, incidentally, provided Paul Schrader with the initial inspiration for the screenplay he wrote for the movie, Taxi Driver...

...Their careful, understated sound emphasizes his lyrics...

...First, years of doo-wap and shoobie-doo had to be endured...

...But then the singer-songwriter came to the rescue...

...Chapin's third collection, Short Stories, included "W*O*L*D," a poignant message from a superannuated superhype AM disk jockey...

...What caught the attention of the mass audience, I think, was the characteristic quality of urgency in the music and in Chapin's exciting, often hushed voice...

...Even in "Taxi," where he is inferior to the original, Chapin manages to generate so much excitement you are not likely to notice...

...It adds convincingly to the "live" feeling, but accomplishes little else...

...Indeed, if Chapin does have a fault, it is that his exceptionally fertile talent occasionally tends to the facile...