singer; songwriter
Personal Information
Born in Cleveland, Ohio, on March 30, 1964.
Education: Graduated from Tufts University.
Career
Singer-songwriter; released debut album, Tracy Chapman, 1988; participated in 1--nation Amnesty International tour, 1988; released Crossroads, 1989; released Matters of the Heart, 1992; released New Beginning, 1995; performed on Lilith Fair tour, 1996; released Telling Stories, 2000.
Life's Work
With a unique style that combined folk music with an African American sensibility, singer-songwriter Tracy Chapman took the pop-music world by storm in 1988. That year, her debut album was released. It sold upwards of ten million copies, and its lead single "Fast Car" became almost universally known among music fans. One of the few late twentieth-century musicians in any genre outside of hip-hop to succeed in delivering a political message to a wide audience, Chapman also helped pave the way for the resurgence of strong, independent female voices in the popular music of the late 1990s.
Chapman was born on March 30, 1964, in Cleveland, Ohio. Her parents divorced when she was four, and her mother found it extremely difficult to raise Chapman and her older sister Aneta. "Sometimes there was no electricity, or the gas would be shut off," Chapman told Time. "I remember standing with my mother in the line to get food stamps." Her mother was a music lover with a large record collection and a determination to nurture her daughter's musical talents. Chapman played the ukulele in elementary school, and later studied clarinet and organ.
Watched "Hee Haw"
It might seem easy to assume that Chapman's bent toward political folk music came about after she entered the elite educational institutions to which she later gained admission. In fact, both her interest in politics and her attraction to the guitar began while she was still in Cleveland. "As a child, I always had a sense of social conditions and political situations," she told Rolling Stone. "I think it had to do with the fact that my mother was always discussing things with my sister and me--also because I read a lot." Another influence, surprisingly enough, came from country music. "One of the things that made me want to learn how to play guitar was watching Buck Owens and Roy Clark and Minnie Pearl on Hee Haw when I was 8 years old," she told Time. "The guitars they played were beautiful."
Chapman won an ABC (A Better Chance) scholarship to the prestigious Wooster School, a prep school in Danbury, Connecticut. She honed her songwriting skills in the school's coffeehouse, starred on its basketball and soccer teams, and was heavily recruited by several top colleges as she approached her graduation in 1982. Enrolling at Tufts University outside Boston, Chapman began studying veterinary medicine, but later switched to anthropology and ethnomusicology--the study of music from outside Western traditions. She continued singing and, on one occasion, played for loose change in the busy public spaces of Harvard Square.
Chapman gained a strong following in the numerous folk coffeehouses and clubs of Boston and nearby Cambridge. She numbered among her admirers a fellow Tufts student, Brian Koppelman, whose father Charles Koppelman was an executive at the large SBK music publishing firm. Chapman's contact with the elder Koppelman, who was bowled over by her songs, led to others. She teamed with veteran manager Elliot Roberts, who had worked with folk-rock stars Joni Mitchell and Neil Young, and was signed to the Elektra record label.
Debut Album Reaches Number One
Chapman began her career almost reluctantly, showing little interest in financial gain and, at one point, turning down an offer from an independent label so as not to interrupt her studies. Promising though her first steps might have seemed, neither Chapman nor anyone at Elektra could have been prepared for the success of her debut album Tracy Chapman, which was released in 1988. The album reached the Number One position on Billboard magazine's pop charts, a rare accomplishment for an unknown newcomer. "Fast Car," a vivid, densely packed narrative of a young woman who dreams of a better future but is dragged down by a series of troubles, became one of the most widely heard songs of the late 1980s.
The album owed its success to a variety of virtues. Often compared with folk/jazz vocalist Joan Armatrading, Chapman also resembled 1960s folk icon Richie Havens in her ability to bring a distinctively African American sensibility to the predominantly white-oriented genre of folk music. However musically distant her style might seem from those of the rap artists who were beginning to flourish in the late 1980s, Chapman shared with the rappers an ambitious way with words and a desire to tell the stories of the American underclass. Some of her songs had a vaguely Caribbean sound, and she drew on the heavily verbal qualities of genres from that part of the world. That aspect of Chapman's music was reinforced visually by her trademark short dreadlocks.
Such songs as "Talkin' Bout a Revolution" espoused an uncompromising political message that was light-years away from the shiny dance pop that was the norm during the late 1980s. Chapman became the subject of intense publicity for some months after the release of her debut album. She won Best New Artist and Best Female Pop Vocal Performance Grammy awards, and several other major awards. Expectations ran high for Chapman's sophomore release, Crossroads, which was released in 1989.
Sales Slipped
Crossroads sold four million copies, a smash hit by any standards except for those of an artist whose debut album had sold ten million. Sales slipped further with the release of Chapman's third album, Matters of the Heart, in 1992. Some critics speculated that the public had grown tired of Chapman's political themes. However, like many other folk-oriented artists, Chapman had been writing songs for many years before making her first recording. She had gradually exhausted her storehouse of material and, as she recorded subsequent albums, was unable to write new material under the glare of publicity and celebrity.
Indeed, when Chapman's New Beginning album put her back near the top of the charts in 1995, it was due to the success of a song, "Give Me One Reason," that she had written a decade earlier while still in college. Fans still flocked to Chapman's concerts, and public admiration of her music's distinctiveness remained strong. She became a star attraction on the all-female Lilith Fair tour in 1996. After the release of the New Beginning album, Chapman took a leave of absence from the recording process. "I felt like my life was on this cycle that was beyond my control," she told Time. "Making records and touring, making records and touring, and in that process not being at home and not being settled. They weren't particularly happy times."
Chapman re-emerged in 2000 with her fifth album, Telling Stories. Reviews were mixed, with Interview praising the album's "intimate and personal" quality and noting approvingly that Chapman "doesn't make an album until she's got something to say." Entertainment Weekly was less enthusiastic, remarking that "Chapman remains an enigma: an intelligent, levelheaded craftsperson unable to convey any emotion beyond resignation." Whatever the future direction of her career, Chapman had already fulfilled the ambition of the woman she depicted in the song "Fast Car": to "be someone, be someone."
Awards
Three Grammy awards, including Best New Artist, for Tracy Chapman, 1988.
Works
Selected discography
- Tracy Chapman, Elektra, 1988.
- Crossroads, Elektra, 1989.
- Matters of the Heart, Elektra, 1992.
- New Beginning, Elektra, 1995.
- Telling Stories, Elektra/Asylum, 2000.
Further Reading
Books
- Contemporary Musicians, volume 4, Gale, 1991; volume 20, Gale, 1997.
- Graff, Gary, ed., MusicHound Rock: The Essential Guide, Visible Ink, 1996.
- Larkin, Colin, ed., The Encyclopedia of Popular Music, Muze UK, 1998.
- Smith, Jessie Carney, ed., Notable Black American Women, Book II, Gale, 1996.
- Billboard, February 12, 2000, p. 11.
- Entertainment Weekly, February 18, 2000, p. 86.
- Interview, March 2000, p. 88.
- Life, August 1988, p. 60.
- The Nation, July 6, 1992, p. 30.
- Playboy, July 1988, p. 26.
- Rolling Stone, September 22, 1998, p. 54.
- Time, March 12, 1990, p. 70; February 28, 2000, p. 92.
- Additional information for this profile was obtained from http://www.allmusic.com.
— James M. Manheim
