Tonight I have Harry Chapin songs playing in my head. Don't know why. For those of you too young to remember him, Chapin was a brilliant songwriter who also sang. Most (all?) his songs were sad, about lost love, lost dreams, lost souls.

One of his biggest popular hits was "Taxi," about a man who picks up his high school love late one night. Brilliant lyrics. Here's the end of the song:

There was not much more for us to talk about,
Whatever we had once was gone.
So I turned my cab into the driveway,
Past the gate and the fine trimmed lawns.
And she said we must get together,
But I knew it'd never be arranged.
And she handed me twenty dollars,
For a two fifty fare, she said
"Harry, keep the change."
Well another man might have been angry,
And another man might have been hurt,
But another man never would have let her go...
I stashed the bill in my shirt.

And she walked away in silence,
It's strange, how you never know,
But we'd both gotten what we'd asked for,
Such a long, long time ago.

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.
And here, she's acting happy,
Inside her handsome home.
And me, I'm flying in my taxi,
Taking tips, and getting stoned,
I go flying so high, when I'm stoned.

Full song lyrics.

Chapin had a social conscience, and helped found an organization to fight hunger. Before his early death, he was playing 200 concerts a year, half of them benefits. His own brief autobiography is here. (From this front page click on "keepsakes" then at the far right near the top click autobiography.) He died in 1981 in a car wreck at 38 years of age. His final project was to write the music and lyrics for the musical "The Cotton Patch Gospel", a reverent retelling of the Gospel based on Clarence Jordan's book of the same name.

Taxi, a live performance.
Mr. Tanner, live.
30,00 Pounds of Bananas, his funniest song, but even here someone dies
Cat's in the Cradle, his most famous song