Greatest Stories Live
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Greatest Stories Live
''Greatest Stories Live'' is a 1976 greatest hits live album by the American singer-songwriter Harry Chapin. It was recorded over three nights at three California venues in November 1975. Certain elements had to be re-recorded in the studio due to technical problems with the live recordings. The original LP release featured three new studio tracks, two of which ("She Is Always Seventeen" and "Love Is Just Another Word") were excluded from the CD release. "A Better Place to Be" was released as a single, and did manage to crack the Billboard Hot 100 chart. The album is notable for its extended version of "30,000 Pounds of Bananas", infamous for Chapin's recounting of his brothers' remarks after hearing the original ending: "Harry...it sucks." The quote became so popular with Harry Chapin fans that concert shirts were sold with the quotation on it. Track listing (CD release) *"She Is Always Seventeen" and "Love Is Just Another Word" appear between "30,000 Pounds of Bananas" and "Th ...
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Harry Chapin
Harold Forster Chapin (; December 7, 1942 – July 16, 1981) was an American singer-songwriter, philanthropist, and hunger activist best known for his folk rock and pop rock songs. He achieved worldwide success in the 1970s. Chapin, a Grammy Award-winning artist and Grammy Hall of Fame inductee, has sold over 16 million records worldwide. Chapin recorded a total of 11 albums from 1972 until his death in 1981. All 14 singles that he released became hits on at least one national music chart. As a dedicated humanitarian, Chapin fought to end world hunger. He was a key participant in the creation of the Presidential Commission on World Hunger in 1977. In 1987, Chapin was posthumously awarded the Congressional Gold Medal for his humanitarian work. Biography Harry Forster Chapin was born on December 7, 1942 in New York City, the second of four children of legendary percussionist Jim Chapin and Jeanne Elspeth, daughter of the literary critic Kenneth Burke. His brothers, Tom and ...
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Dreams Go By
"Dreams Go By" is a song written and performed by Harry Chapin. The song was included on his 1975 album, Portrait Gallery. The song is about life passing by, and your dreams not coming true. The song became a top 40 adult contemporary hit, peaking at #33 on the Billboard Adult Contemporary, where it stayed for two weeks. ''Record World ''Record World'' magazine was one of the three main music industry trade magazines in the United States, along with '' Billboard'' and '' Cashbox''. It was founded in 1946 under the name ''Music Vendor'', but in 1964 it was changed to ''Record Wo ...'' said that "the kind of delayed gratification that parents have been urging upon children since time began takes on a distinctively different hue here in this family-based classic" and that "broken dreams are pieced back together with much Chapin insight." Chart performance Weekly charts References {{authority control 1974 songs Elektra Records singles Harry Chapin songs Songs written by ...
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Piano
The piano is a stringed keyboard instrument in which the strings are struck by wooden hammers that are coated with a softer material (modern hammers are covered with dense wool felt; some early pianos used leather). It is played using a keyboard, which is a row of keys (small levers) that the performer presses down or strikes with the fingers and thumbs of both hands to cause the hammers to strike the strings. It was invented in Italy by Bartolomeo Cristofori around the year 1700. Description The word "piano" is a shortened form of ''pianoforte'', the Italian term for the early 1700s versions of the instrument, which in turn derives from ''clavicembalo col piano e forte'' (key cimbalom with quiet and loud)Pollens (1995, 238) and ''fortepiano''. The Italian musical terms ''piano'' and ''forte'' indicate "soft" and "loud" respectively, in this context referring to the variations in volume (i.e., loudness) produced in response to a pianist's touch or pressure on the keys: the grea ...
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Clarinet
The clarinet is a musical instrument in the woodwind family. The instrument has a nearly cylindrical bore and a flared bell, and uses a single reed to produce sound. Clarinets comprise a family of instruments of differing sizes and pitches. The clarinet family is the largest such woodwind family, with more than a dozen types, ranging from the BB♭ contrabass to the E♭ soprano. The most common clarinet is the B soprano clarinet. German instrument maker Johann Christoph Denner is generally credited with inventing the clarinet sometime after 1698 by adding a register key to the chalumeau, an earlier single-reed instrument. Over time, additional keywork and the development of airtight pads were added to improve the tone and playability. Today the clarinet is used in classical music, military bands, klezmer, jazz, and other styles. It is a standard fixture of the orchestra and concert band. Etymology The word ''clarinet'' may have entered the English language via the Fr ...
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Clavinet
The Clavinet is an electrically amplified clavichord invented by Ernst Zacharias and manufactured by the Hohner company of Trossingen, West Germany, from 1964 to 1982. The instrument produces sounds by a rubber pad striking a point on a tensioned string, and was designed to resemble the Renaissance-era clavichord. Although originally intended for home use, the Clavinet became popular on stage, and could be used to create electric guitar sounds on a keyboard. It is strongly associated with Stevie Wonder, who used the instrument extensively, particularly on his 1972 hit "Superstition", and was regularly featured in rock, funk and reggae music throughout the 1960s and 1970s. Modern digital keyboards can emulate the Clavinet sound, but there is also a grass-roots industry of repairers who continue to maintain the instrument. Description The Clavinet is an electromechanical instrument that is usually used in conjunction with a keyboard amplifier. Most models have 60 keys ranging ...
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Percussion Instrument
A percussion instrument is a musical instrument that is sounded by being struck or scraped by a beater including attached or enclosed beaters or rattles struck, scraped or rubbed by hand or struck against another similar instrument. Excluding zoomusicological instruments and the human voice, the percussion family is believed to include the oldest musical instruments.''The Oxford Companion to Music'', 10th edition, p.775, In spite of being a very common term to designate instruments, and to relate them to their players, the percussionists, percussion is not a systematic classificatory category of instruments, as described by the scientific field of organology. It is shown below that percussion instruments may belong to the organological classes of ideophone, membranophone, aerophone and cordophone. The percussion section of an orchestra most commonly contains instruments such as the timpani, snare drum, bass drum, tambourine, belonging to the membranophones, and cym ...
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Synthesizer
A synthesizer (also spelled synthesiser) is an electronic musical instrument that generates audio signals. Synthesizers typically create sounds by generating waveforms through methods including subtractive synthesis, additive synthesis and frequency modulation synthesis. These sounds may be altered by components such as filters, which cut or boost frequencies; envelopes, which control articulation, or how notes begin and end; and low-frequency oscillators, which modulate parameters such as pitch, volume, or filter characteristics affecting timbre. Synthesizers are typically played with keyboards or controlled by sequencers, software or other instruments, and may be synchronized to other equipment via MIDI. Synthesizer-like instruments emerged in the United States in the mid-20th century with instruments such as the RCA Mark II Sound Synthesizer, RCA Mark II, which was controlled with Punched card, punch cards and used hundreds of vacuum tubes. The Moog synthesizer, d ...
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Singing
Singing is the act of creating musical sounds with the voice. A person who sings is called a singer, artist or vocalist (in jazz and/or popular music). Singers perform music (arias, recitatives, songs, etc.) that can be sung with or without accompaniment by musical instruments. Singing is often done in an ensemble of musicians, such as a choir. Singers may perform as soloists or accompanied by anything from a single instrument (as in art song or some jazz styles) up to a symphony orchestra or big band. Different singing styles include art music such as opera and Chinese opera, Indian music, Japanese music, and religious music styles such as gospel, traditional music styles, world music, jazz, blues, ghazal, and popular music styles such as pop, rock, and electronic dance music. Singing can be formal or informal, arranged, or improvised. It may be done as a form of religious devotion, as a hobby, as a source of pleasure, comfort, or ritual as part of music education or ...
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Guitar
The guitar is a fretted musical instrument that typically has six strings. It is usually held flat against the player's body and played by strumming or plucking the strings with the dominant hand, while simultaneously pressing selected strings against frets with the fingers of the opposite hand. A plectrum or individual finger picks may also be used to strike the strings. The sound of the guitar is projected either acoustically, by means of a resonant chamber on the instrument, or amplified by an electronic pickup and an amplifier. The guitar is classified as a chordophone – meaning the sound is produced by a vibrating string stretched between two fixed points. Historically, a guitar was constructed from wood with its strings made of catgut. Steel guitar strings were introduced near the end of the nineteenth century in the United States; nylon strings came in the 1940s. The guitar's ancestors include the gittern, the vihuela, the four- course Renaissance guitar, and the ...
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30,000 Pounds Of Bananas
"30,000 Pounds Of Bananas," sometimes spelled "Thirty Thousand Pounds Of Bananas," is a folk rock song by Harry Chapin from his 1974 album, ''Verities & Balderdash.'' The song became more popular in its live extended recording from Chapin's 1976 concert album, '' Greatest Stories Live'' that started the phrase "Harry, it sucks." The song is based on an actual truck accident that occurred in Scranton, Pennsylvania, in 1965. Incident On March 18, 1965, a 33-year-old truck driver, Eugene P. Sesky, was on his way to deliver a load of bananas to Scranton, Pennsylvania. Sesky, an employee of Fred Carpentier—operator of a small truck line in Scranton—was returning from the boat piers at Newark, New Jersey, where he had picked up his load. The load was destined for the A&P produce Warehouse in South Side. Sesky was driving a 1950s Brockway diesel truck tractor with a semi-trailer and was headed down Rt. 307 when he lost control. That section of Rt. 307 contains a two-mile descen ...
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Circle (Harry Chapin Song)
"Circle" is a song written and performed by Harry Chapin. The song was included on the 1972 album Sniper and Other Love Songs. Though it wasn't released as a single, it quickly became a fan favorite and is the "Chapin theme song." The song was recorded by The New Seekers and become one of their highest-charting singles, though Chapin's version is the most popular. It has been included on numerous compilation albums from Chapin's record label. Background The song was considered by Chapin to be the "Chapin theme song." The song became a standard for live concerts as it was used at almost every concert for the end. He would encourage the audience to sing along and would also have various members of the band sing the chorus. Tom chapin Versions According to Tom Chapin (Harry's brother), Circle was written by Harry for a TV show, Make a Wish of which Tom was host. Tom was thus the first to perform the song. Tom, like Harry, frequently performs the song in concert and has included it ...
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Taxi (song)
"Taxi" is a song written by Harry Chapin, released as a single in early 1972 to coincide with the release of his album '' Heads & Tales''. It is an autobiographical ballad using first-person narrative to tell the story of a taxi cab driver meeting an old flame from his youth when he picks her up in his cab. Chapin debuted the song on NBC's ''The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson'', which prompted calls and telegrams from viewers requesting that Chapin return to the show. It was the first time in the show's history that host Johnny Carson brought a performer back the very next night for an encore performance. "Taxi" helped to establish Chapin's musical style and emerged as the singer-songwriter's early signature song, with Chapin often associated with taxi-related imagery. Jim Connors, music director and disc jockey at Boston AM radio station WMEX, is credited with discovering Chapin. The single charted on both Boston stations WMEX and WRKO in late February, reached number one ...
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