It did not start with Harry Chapin. It started with his wife.
Sandy Chapin had been married before. Her first husband, James Cashmore, had a famously distant relationship with his own father, John Cashmore, a busy New York politician who served as Brooklyn borough president. Sandy watched the two of them struggle to connect for years.
One day she heard a country song on the radio, and the idea came together. She wrote a poem about a father who is always too busy for his little boy. The boy keeps asking for time. The father keeps promising later. And then, years later, the roles turn around.
Harry put Sandy’s words to music.
By then, Harry was one of the busiest men in music. He toured constantly, wrote constantly, played concert after concert. His own son, Josh, had just been born.
When he heard the song played back, it hit him hard.
“Frankly, this song scares me to death,” Harry admitted.
He knew exactly who that busy father in the song could become.
“Cat’s in the Cradle” came out on the 1974 album Verities & Balderdash. In December 1974, it went to number one in America. It was the only number one hit Harry Chapin ever had. It was nominated for a Grammy, and decades later it was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame.
Fathers heard it on the radio and pulled their cars over. Grown men admitted they cried. Many said it was the first time a song had made them look hard at their own lives.
And Harry? In a way, he spent the rest of his life trying not to be the man in his own song. Not with his time for others, at least.
He became one of the great campaigners against hunger. In 1975 he co-founded World Hunger Year with radio host Bill Ayres. More than half of his concerts were benefit shows, raising money for food banks and hunger causes. He helped bring about a US presidential commission on world hunger.
On July 16, 1981, Harry was driving on the Long Island Expressway. He was on his way to play a free benefit concert that evening.
He never arrived. He died in a crash that afternoon. He was 38 years old.
Six years later, on December 7, 1987, the day he would have turned 45, Harry Chapin was honoured with the Congressional Gold Medal for his work against hunger.
His son Josh grew up to help run the foundation his father’s work created.
Fifty years on, the song still does what it did in 1974. It reminds parents that the time is now, not later.
Did this song ever make you think about your own father or children? Tell us in the comments.
