Mary Chapin

The best of her 1970s material, taken from her first three solo albums. Many strong originals, and two excellent Beatle covers ("Things We Said Today" and "Blackbird") that remain among the best folk interpretations of Lennon/McCartney compositions.

Harry Forster Chapin was an American singer-songwriter best known for his folk rock songs. New York singer-songwriter whose story songs delivered in a soulful rasp bewitched 1970s pop radio. Here is the Harry Chapin retrospective collection featuring the albums: "Heads & Tales", "Sniper & Other Love Songs", "Short Stories", "Verities & Balderdash", "Portrait Gallery", "On The Road To Kingdom Come", "Dance Band On The Titanic", and "Living Room Suite".

This Rhino-issued box set features five of the late great singer/songwriter's best albums in their entireties, including Heads and Tales (1972), Sniper and Other Love Songs (1972), Short Stories (1973), Verities & Balderdash (1974), and On the Road to Kingdom Come (1976).

More than a decade has now passed since April 1995, when Joan Baez and her guests took over the Bottom Line cabaret in the heart of New York’s Greenwich Village for the recording of Ring Them Bells, a watershed event in post-modern folk music. This is an expanded edition double-CD: 90 minutes vs. the original single CD’s 64 minutes. The original's 15 tracks have now been upped to 21 tracks - the additional six of which are previously unreleased - more accurately reflecting the sequence of the recording over the course of two nights, with two sets each night. Added in are three additional performances by Joan (Love Song To A Stranger, Geordie, You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere), a second duet with Tish Hinojosa (Gracias A La Vida), a second duet with Indigo Girls (The Water Is Wide), and a second duet with Mary Chapin Carpenter (Stones In The Road). Joan's other guests on this memorable recording are: Mimi Farina, Mary Black, Janis Ian, Kate & Anna McGarrigle and Dar Williams.

This six CD box - the first serious, multi-disc reappraisal of Chapin's work - presents the nine albums he issued from 1972 to 1978: Heads And Tales, Sniper And Other Love Songs, Short Stories, Verities And Balderdash, Portrait Gallery, Greatest Stories Live, On The Road To Kingdom Come, Dance Band On The Titanic, and Living Room Suite. After Elektra, Chapin signed with Boardwalk for a final album before dying tragically and prematurely in a car accident in 1981. With 4000-word notes, placing Chapin's career in context, and arguing for his elevation in the cultural hierarchy, by Record Collector contributor, Charles Donovan. Acoustic guitarist and singer/songwriter, Harry Chapin, who was born in New York, was a pioneer of the elaborate story-song, a style whose roots lay in folk and country music.

For the first time ever, Harry Chapin's best songs in TAB notation!

Harry Chapin's brother Steve and his drummer Howard Fields remember: "On April 11th 1977, Harry Chapin and his band, near the end of their first tour overseas, performed a concert broadcast over German radio at a small auditorium in the city of Bremen in front of 400 people. The performance was akin to the calm after a storm in that it followed two consecutive arena shows (in Munich and Dortmund) where Harry would open up for a roster of rock, blues and heavy metal bands that featured The Small Faces, John Mayall, The Scorpions and headliner Status Quo. A more unlikely billing for Harry and the band was unimaginable. The crowd was very drunk, very loud and very not-at-all-interested in Harry's songs and sound. So, on the following night he was delighted to be back in his element, in Bremen, in front of a small, quiet, and appreciative audience attentively listening to his words and stories. Fueled by the change of atmosphere, a now energized Harry would speak and speak and speak, as if he were in Boston or Boise, to an adoring audience regardless of how many of his words were actually understood.