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Harry Chapin - 30,000 Pounds of Bananas

Harry Chapin - 30,000 Pounds of Bananas Lyrics and Youtube Music Videos

Album: Verities And Balderdash
Released: 1974

30,000 Pounds of Bananas Lyrics

It was just after dark when the truck started down
The hill that leads into Scranton Pennsylvania.
Carrying thirty thousand pounds of bananas.
Carrying thirty thousand pounds (hit it Big John) of bananas.

He was a young driver,
Just out on his second job.
And he was carrying the next day's pasty fruits
For everyone in that coal-scarred city
Where children play without despair
In backyard slag-piles and folks manage to eat each day
Just about thirty thousand pounds of bananas.
Yes, just about thirty thousand pounds (scream it again, John) .

He passed a sign that he should have seen,
Saying "shift to low gear, a fifty dollar fine my friend."
He was thinking perhaps about the warm-breathed woman
Who was waiting at the journey's end.
He started down the two mile drop,
The curving road that wound from the top of the hill.
He was pushing on through the shortening miles that ran down to the depot.
Just a few more miles to go,
Then he'd go home and have her ease his long, cramped day away.
And the smell of thirty thousand pounds of bananas.
Yes the smell of thirty thousand pounds of bananas.

He was picking speed as the city spread its twinkling lights below him.
But he paid no heed as the shivering thoughts of the nights
Delights went through him.
His foot nudged the brakes to slow him down.
But the pedal floored easy without a sound.
He said "Christ!"
It was funny how he had named the only man who could save him now.
He was trapped inside a dead-end hellslide,
Riding on his fear-hunched back
Was every one of those yellow green
I'm telling you thirty thousand pounds of bananas.
Yes, there were thirty thousand pounds of bananas.

He barely made the sweeping curve that led into the steepest grade.
And he missed the thankful passing bus at ninety miles an hour.
And he said "God, make it a dream!"
As he rode his last ride down.
And he said "God, make it a dream!"
As he rode his last ride down.
And he sideswiped nineteen neat parked cars,
Clipped off thirteen telephone poles,
Hit two houses, bruised eight trees,
And Blue-Crossed seven people.
It was then he lost his head,
Not to mention an arm or two before he stopped.
And he slid for four hundred yards
Along the hill that leads into Scranton, Pennsylvania.
All those thirty thousand pounds of bananas.

You know the man who told me about it on the bus,
As it went up the hill out of Scranton, Pennsylvania,
He shrugged his shoulders, he shook his head,
And he said (and this is exactly what he said)
"Boy that sure must've been something.
Just imagine thirty thousand pounds of bananas.
Yes, there were thirty thousand pounds of mashed bananas.
Of bananas. Just bananas. Thirty thousand pounds.
Of Bananas. not no driver now. Just bananas!"

From Greatest Stories Live: Ending number one

Yes, we have no bananas,
We have no bananas today
(Spoken: And if that wasn't enough)
Yes, we have no bananas,
Bananas in Scranton, P A

From Greatest Stories Live: Ending #2:

A woman walks into her room where her child lies sleeping,
And when she sees his eyes are closed,
She sits there, silently weeping,
And though she lives in Scranton, Pennsylvania
She never ever eats ... Bananas
Not one of thirty thousand pounds .... of bananas

Writer/s: CHAPIN, HARRY F.
Publisher: Warner/Chappell Music, Inc.
Lyrics licensed and provided by LyricFind

30,000 Pounds of Bananas

This was based on a true story about an accident in Scranton, Pennsylvania where a driver lost control of a truck full of bananas he was delivering. He was killed in the crash, and bananas were strewn all over the place. Sandy Chapin, who was married to Harry from 1968 until he was killed in a car accident in 1981, doesn't like this song at all. She explains how it came about: "That song morphed. It had a life of its own. Originally it was a poem that Harry wrote, it was just words on a page. And early on he was doing different kinds of musical performances with his father, and also his brothers who were in college at the time. So there was a limited time for them to perform. But he did it as a spoken song. And then I guess after the Village Gate days, and the beginning of the contract with Electra, he was going through notebooks and looking for material. He decided to put music to it. And I think the song developed a life of its own from audience reaction. It was a serious poem to begin with on the society's preoccupation with numbers. You have your drivers license and your social security and your credit card, and on and on and on and on. You're just made up of numbers. But it also was a story – a true story that was told to him while he was on a Greyhound bus ride. It's real. The widow still lives in Scranton, Pennsylvania. The original poem started from a preoccupation with numbers, and then it got to be a kind of performance piece that was kind of tragicomedy. Very difficult, I thought." (Read more in our interview with Sandy Chapin .)

On his Greatest Stories live album, Chapin says: "This song starts off with an absolutely brilliant Chet Atkins guitar lick that took me about 4 hours to steal."

In 1402 Portuguese explorers discovered bananas in Western Africa and took them to the Canary Islands. The word "banana" is the native word for the fruit in Guinea. The Europeans first came across bananas when in the early 15th century Portuguese explorers discovered bananas in Western Africa and took them to the Canary Islands. The word "banana" is the native word for the fruit in Guinea. Many North Americans got their first taste of bananas at the 1877 US Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia. Each banana was wrapped in foil and sold for 10 cents. (both the above from the book Food for Thought: Extraordinary Little Chronicles of the World by Ed Pearce)

Harry Chapin - Cat's in the Cradle

Harry Chapin - Cat's in the Cradle Lyrics and Youtube Music Videos

Album: Verities And Balderdash
Released: 1974

Cat's in the Cradle Lyrics

My child arrived just the other day
He came to the world in the usual way
But there were planes to catch, and bills to pay
He learned to walk while I was away
And he was talking 'fore I knew it, and as he grew
He'd say, "I'm gonna be like you, dad
You know I'm gonna be like you."

[Chorus]
And the Cat's in the Cradle and the silver spoon
Little boy blue and the man in the moon
"When you coming home, dad?" "I don't know when
But we'll get together then
You know we'll have a good time then."

My son turned ten just the other day
He said, "Thanks for the ball, dad; come on, let's play
Can you teach me to throw?"
I said, "Not today, I got a lot to do."
He said, "That's okay."
And he walked away, but his smile never dimmed
And said, "I'm gonna be like him, yeah
You know I'm gonna be like him."

[Chorus]

Well, he came from college just the other day
So much like a man, I just had to say
"Son, I'm proud of you. Can you sit for a while?"
He shook his head, and he said with a smile
"What I'd really like, dad, is to borrow the car keys
See you later; can I have them please?"

And the cat's in the cradle and the silver spoon
Little boy blue and the man in the moon
"When you coming home, son?" "I don't know when
But we'll get together then, dad
You know we'll have a good time then."

I've long since retired, and my son's moved away
I called him up just the other day
I said, "I'd like to see you if you don't mind."
He said, "I'd love to, dad, if I could find the time
You see, my new job's a hassle, and the kid's got the flu
But it's sure nice talking to you, dad
It's been sure nice talking to you."
And as I hung up the phone, it occurred to me
He'd grown up just like me
My boy was just like me

And the cat's in the cradle and the silver spoon
Little boy blue and the man in the moon
"When you coming home, son?" "I don't know when
But we'll get together then, dad
We're gonna have a good time then."

Writer/s: CHAPIN, HARRY F./CHAPIN, SANDY
Publisher: Warner/Chappell Music, Inc.
Lyrics licensed and provided by LyricFind

Cat's in the Cradle

This heartbreaking song tells of a father and son who can't schedule time to be with each other, and it serves as a warning against putting one's career before family. The verses start out with a natural harmony and depict the tale of a father with his newborn son. Although dad gets the necessities of child rearing accomplished, he doesn't allow himself to put in quality time with his son because of his career. Initially, this seems like no big deal because of his hectic and oblivious life working and paying bills.

The recurring verse has the son saying, "I'm gonna be like you Dad, you know I'm gonna be like you..."

Over time, both father and son grow into a switching of life roles. The father realizes his son's ambitions of college, grades, and driving, and wants to spend more time with him, yet slowly grasps the reality that now his son has no time for such things. In the last verse, Chapin illustrates that the son is all grown up with a fast-paced job and kids of his own. In a glaring twist of roles, we see that the son now has no time to spend with his father. With a heavy heart, dad realizes that his boy has become just like him.

This song is based on a poem that Harry's wife Sandy wrote. She told us: "'Cat's In The Cradle' was a combination of a couple of things. Whenever I was on a long drive I would listen to country music, because words would keep me awake more than just music. And I heard a song… I can remember the story, but I don't remember who sang it or what the title was, but an old couple were sitting at their breakfast table and looking out the window, and they saw the rusted swing and the sandbox, and they were reminiscing about the good old days when all the children were around and then the grandchildren, and how it passed, and now it's all gone.

The other part of the idea – this is always a problem, because Harry introduced the song at all his concerts and said, 'This is a song my wife wrote to zap me because I wasn't home when our son Josh was born.' I was always kind of amused by that because of the fact that we learn life's lessons too late. We don't learn lessons before the fact. We don't have a child born and then have all this wisdom. So I always thought it was interesting the way he told the story.

But I learned the story because my [first] husband was going to New York to be a lawyer, and I had a teaching job in New York. While we were apartment hunting, we were living with his parents in Brooklyn. His father was the borough president of Brooklyn at the time, which I think was a much more important job than it is today. But every day when he got home from work, he would start talking to his son about, 'It'd be great if you'd go down to the club on Tuesday night, I'd like to introduce you to some of the people I know,' and so forth. And he started trying to engineer a career for him which leads to politics. They did not have any relationship or communication because they had been so busy until his son went off to college and was gone. I don't remember exactly how, but he started talking to me. My father-in-law would say me, even though we were all in the same room, 'Tell Jimmy I would like to see him down at the clubhouse on Tuesday.' It was really very strange.

So this is the way the evenings went. The conversation was going through me. So I realized what had happened. You know, relationships and characters and personalities and all those things are formed by two, so I realized that that hadn't happened. And it was very jerky at that stage. So I observed something that gave me the idea for the song."

It took the birth of his son for Harry Chapin to decide to turn the poem his wife wrote into a song. Sandy Chapin explained in her Songfacts interview: "Harry and I would exchange writing of all kinds. We were always working on each other's writing. Some of my writing at a certain period were 20-page papers for a doctoral program at Columbia. So it wasn't always that poetic. But we both looked at each other's stuff. And then one time he came home and he said, 'What have you been doing?' I showed him 'Cat's In The Cradle,' and he said, 'Well, that's interesting.'

You know, sometimes he'd pick up something and put music to it. And that didn't really grab him at all. And then after Josh was born, it did. He picked it up and he wrote music to it."

Sandy Chapin runs the Harry Chapin Foundation, which does what it can to continue supporting the causes Harry championed when he was alive. While Sandy does a lot of work for the foundation, her focus is her family and her role as an on-call grandmother for six grandchildren. As can be expected of the woman who wrote "Cat's In The Cradle," she values the time she can spend with them while they are still young.

In our 2009 interview, she said: "The eldest of the six has just gone into 6th grade, which means not only does she live in a community where the kids grow up fast, but now she's in a middle school where everybody thinks they're teenagers and ought to be in high school. So you know, you have to grab those years. It used to be when I would drive up to the house, she would jump out and run and greet me, and say, 'Grandma, what's the project for today?' Because I would always bring some arts and crafts. We'd make Thanksgiving place cards, or Christmas tree ornaments. But all through the year I was always doing projects with them. So now she's answering her e-mail, she's on her cell phone and doing dates, walking around town with her friends, being a grownup, and doing all the after school activities. You have to grab that chance when you have it." (Read more in our interview with Sandy Chapin .)

The message about procrastination and missed opportunities makes this song an excellent parable for use in church sermons, where it remains very popular.

Harry Chapin included various symbols of childhood in the lyrics as reminders of how quickly it ends. "Cat's Cradle" is a game played with string, "Silver Spoons" are ornamental spoons for babies, and "Little Boy Blue" is a nursery rhyme. "Man In The Moon" could be about the human features children see when they look at the moon.

This song was used for a commercial in Northern Ireland about the troubles at the time. In the spot, a father is involved in one of the political groups and he isn't much of an example for his son (flash back father with gun running into house terrorizing family of opposite religion, etc.). Because of this the kid ends of following in his foot steps. It tried to send the message that following a bad example can become a vicious circle and unless we change, the troubles will never go away and our children will suffer. (thanks, Tess - L'Derry, Ireland)

There have been many cover versions of this song, but the only one to chart is by Ugly Kid Joe, a puckish rock band known for their novelty hit "Everything About You." Released as a single from their 1992 album America's Least Wanted, their rendition went to #6 US and #7 UK (the only UK chart entry for the song, since Chapin's original didn't make the tally).

In their remake, Ugly Kid Joe changed the lyric "Man in the moon" to "Man ON the moon," apparently thinking the song was referring to Neil Armstrong's 1969 lunar landing. Another tweak: their version is titled "Cats in the Cradle," without the apostrophe. This indicates that there is more than one cat in the cradle, but it's unlikely the band was concerned with the vagaries of grammar.

Ugly Kid Joe's version is earnest, however. When we spoke with their lead singer Whitfield Crane , he said, "That song means a lot to me just because of my childhood."

The video for the Ugly Kid Joe version was directed by Matt Mahurin, an illustrator whose work has appeared in many high-profile magazines. Mahurin was shooting a lot of music videos around this time, including clips for Alice in Chains ("No Excuses") and Soundgarden ("Outshined").

For the "Cats in the Cradle" video, Mahurin shows the boy growing into a man, ending with a shot of the father old and lonely. It's an elegant and touching portrayal of the song, with lots of cinematic slow-motion footage.

The scenes where Whitfield Crane is singing were shot in Mahurin's game room - he had Crane sit on the pool table and sing. They had what they needed after one take.

This song plays throughout a Nissan commercial that debuted during the 2015 Super Bowl (between the Patriots and Seahawks). In the spot, a champion race car driver spends most of his time away from home and rarely sees his son. At the end of the commercial, he shows up in a Nissan to surprise his now-teenaged son.

We found the ad troubling for two reasons:

1) The idea that an absentee father can show up late in his child's life and all will be forgiven.
2) At one point in the commercial, the driver survives a crash. Chapin was killed in a car accident.

Still, any time the song is used in a commercial, Chapin's estate gets paid, which ultimately benefits his foundation.