For once, I have absolutely no idea how I became familiar with this week's tune, other than I heard it on the radio and fell in love with it. Not sure if it was AM or FM, not sure when (though it wasn't when it was first released) but definitely after we'd moved from California. The song takes place in San Francisco, and I'd be willing to bet that played a part in my liking it as during the mid to late seventies I was still jonesing hard for my city by the bay....
Harry Chapin was born in New York City in 1942 and began his musical journey by learning the trumpet in the sixth grade. After graduating high school Chapin attended the United States Air Force Academy for a short time, and then Cornell University but never received a degree. He originally set out to be a documentary filmmaker but in 1971 he began to concentrate on music and started playing nightclubs in New York City with his band. Within a year he was signed to a lucrative recording contract and released his first two albums. Over the course of his career, Chapin became a huge concert draw and was one of the better paid music performers of the seventies. He also used his money kindly, becoming a huge advocate for hunger relief (his last manager, Ken Kragen, would draw on his experience with Chapin to start USA for Africa) as well as performing numerous benefit concerts for multiple charitable causes. Chapin was nominated for two Grammy Awards and eventually won Grammys for the President's Merit Award and the Hall of Fame Award. For his career, Chapin released nine studio albums (with one top five), two live albums, fourteen compilations, and thirteen singles (with one #1). Sadly, Chapin was killed in an auto accident in 1981 at the all too young age of thirty-eight. His hunger foundation carries on, run by his widow and one of his sons.
Fun Fact #1: Chapin was quite the renaissance man. During his time as a filmmaker, he wrote and directed Legendary Champions which was nominated for a documentary Academy Award.in 1968. In 1975 he wrote and performed The Night That Made America Famous on Broadway which went on to garner two Tony Award Nominations.
"Taxi" was the first single released from his debut album, the rather punnily entitled Heads & Tales. The single would reach #24 (with a bullet!) on the Billboard Hot 100, while the album would peak at #24 on the Billboard 200 (and would also eventually go platinum).
Fun Fact #2: When Chapin performed this week's song in 1972 on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, the audience response was so great that Chapin was asked to come back the next night to perform it again. It was the first time in the history of the show that such an event happened.
"Taxi" very deftly tells the tale of a cab driver picking up a fare and realizing she was a short-lived love of his youth, and how they'd left each other to pursue dreams that never came true (the song is autobiographical in a small sense in that Chapin did have a young love that married into money who wanted to be an actress and as noted above Chapin did at one point want to learn to fly--the taxi ride itself, though is merely the work of his imagination). There is much to like in this week's tune--Chapin tells a hell of a romantic story without turning it maudlin or schmaltzy, his vocals are just the right touch of a youthful yearning reminiscence and the time worn acceptance of abject reality, his lyrics are tremendously well done, the music is catchy, and there's a bridge in the middle that I never cared for when I was younger but as I've aged it's come to me how important it is to the narrator's story. But in the end, what drives this song to greatness for me is a scene at the end when his one-time lover offers him a twenty-dollar bill for a two-fifty fare (it was the early seventies--two-fifty today wouldn't get you to the end of your driveway), and the narrator notes that some men would have been angry, some would have been hurt, and some would have never let her go--but he simply stuffs the bill in his shirt. It's the perfect lead-in to his discovery that both of their dreams had, in a way, come true--she's acting happy in her life and he's flying in his taxi--and that the real world has ways of giving us what we wish for in ways that we didn't wish for. It's not often that a story makes for a great pop single, but Chapin pulls it off with a troubadour's adroitness. A beautiful reminder of what the best of pop music can do.
[Blogger's Aside: Chapin did write a sequel to "Taxi" called, well, "Sequel." I didn't care for it much when it was first released (1980, reached a notch higher than the original on the charts at #23), but in listening to it this week it seemed better than I remembered but it won't be appearing on Friday Night Jukebox any time soon. Song here and lyrics here, for anyone interested.]
Lyric Sheet: "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..."
Enjoy:
Fuck Donald Trump
Peace,
emaycee
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