Harry Chapin - Bummer
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 4 ก.พ. 2025
- "His mama was a midnight woman
His daddy was a drifter drummer
One night they put it together
Nine months later came the little black bummer
He was a laid back lump in the cradle
Chewing the paint chips that fell from the ceiling
Whenever he cried he got a fist in his face
So he learned not to show his feelings
He was a pig-tail puller in grammer school
Left back twice by the seventh grade
Sniffing glue in Junior High
And the first one in school to get laid
He was a weed-speed pusher at fifteen
He was mainlining skag a year later
He'd started pimping when they put him away
In jail he changed from a junkie to a hater
And just like the man from the precinct said:
"Put him away, you better kill him instead.
A bummer like that is better of dead
Someday they're gonna have to put a bullet in his head."
They threw him back on the street, he robbed an A & P
He didn't blink at the buddy that he shafted
And just about the time they would have caught him too
He had the damn good fortune to get drafted
He was A-One bait for Vietnam, you see they needed more bodies in a hurry
He was a cinch to train cause all they had to do
Was to figure how to funnel his fury
They put him in a tank near the D M Z
To catch the gooks slipping over the border
They said his mission was to Search and Destroy
And for once he followed and order
One sweat-soaked day in the Yung-Po Valley
With the ground still steaming from the rain
There was a bloody little battle that didn't mean nothing
Except to the few that remained
You see a couple hundred slants had trapped the other five tanks
And had started to pick off the crews
When he came on the scene and it really did seem
This is why he'd paid those dues
It was something like a butcher going berserk
Or a sane man acting like a fool
Or the bravest thing that a man had ever done
Or a madman blowing his cool
Well he came on through like a knife through butter
Or a scythe sweeping through the grass
Or to say it like the man would have said it himself:
"Just a big black bastard kicking ass!"
And just like the man from the precinct said:
"Put him away, you better kill him instead.
A bummer like that is better of dead
Someday they're gonna have to put a bullet in his head."
When it was over and the smoke had cleared
There were a lot of V C bodies in the mud
And when the rescued men came over for the very first time
They found him smiling as he lay in his blood
They picked up the pieces and they stitched him back together
He pulled through though they thought he was a goner
And it force them to give him what they said they would
Six purple hearts and the Medal of Honor
Of course he slouched as the chief white honkey said:
"Service beyond the call of duty"
But the first soft thought was passing through his mind
"My medal is a Mother of a beauty!"
He got a couple of jobs with the ribbon on his chest
And though he tried he really couldn't do 'em
There was only a couple of things that he was really trained for
And he found himself drifting back to 'em
Just about the time he was ready to break
The V A stopped sending him his checks
Just a matter of time 'cause there was no doubt
About what he was going to do next
It ended up one night in a grocery store
Gun in hand and nine cops at the door
And when his last battle was over
He lay crumpled and broken on the floor
And just like the man from the precinct said:
"Put him away, you better kill him instead.
A bummer like that is better of dead
Someday they're gonna have to put a bullet in his head."
Well he'd breathed his last, but ten minutes past
Before they dared to enter the place
And when they flipped his riddled body over they found
His second smile frozen on his face
They found his gun where he'd thrown it
There was something else clenched in his fist
And when they pried his fingers open they found the Medal of Honor
And the Sergeant said: "Where in the hell he get this?"
There was a stew about burying him in Arlington
So they shipped him in box to Fayette
And they kind of stashed him in a grave in the county plot
The kind we remember to forget
And just like the man from the precinct said:
"Put him away, you better kill him instead.
A bummer like that is better of dead
Someday they're gonna have to put a bullet in his head." "
/Lyrics from The Harry Chapin Archive at Harrychapin.com\
Harry always had a soft place in his heart for the AF. I was in Frankfurt in '77, and Harry was on European Tour. He had an afternoon off, and arranged with Frankfurt Air Base to give an impromptu concert. We all had a couple hours notice. There was a covered picnic shed, he sat on a banquet table, his family with him, and there were about 200 of us on picnic tables, and of course, the various base colonels took a table in the front.
One of the guys insisted he do Bummer. Harry knew how that would turn out, and declined. Well, that started it. More and more of us were asking for Bummer, so he conceded, and he didn't get thru but about half the song, before the colonels got up and walked out. Harry kept going, and finished the song. I had maximum respect. And it's always impressive to watch a top star strut his stuff 20 ft in front of you. As far as the colonel's reaction, there's an old story about Bob Hope doing the same thing at a USO tour show in NYC. Hope topped it off with, 'Now they're gone, and we can have a good time!'
The military can be strange, that way. Harry also talked a bit about his Beast summer at the AF Academy, the basic training we went thru the first summer. He had more brains than I did, and bailed. He would have been class of '64, I was class of '73.
Class of 73 here.
Harry Chapin is the GOAT
This song and the album Portrait Gallery is incredible.
I was a tank crewmen in the Nam Usmc this is good anti war song our so called leaders should pay attention
Oh what a musical composer. Up there with the Beatles, Bee Gees, Neil Sedaka, Elton....what a clever clever lyricist. Great!!
I am sorry for people who don't remember Harry
im a sinical chap . i always change the word from his to my head . or from his to mine lol . man Harry Chapin what a Man . what would it take for a MAN to write these lyrics . im Astounded .
This is one of my all time favorite songs! Thanks for uploading it.
Shoneuw Wow what a story teller ...👍
Its a true story, with a little poetic license, shocked hollywood hasn't jumped on it
More than a little poetic license (but not nearly as much as with Bob Dylan's Hurricane which is pure fiction except for Carter's name). His name was Dwight Johnson and while I can't say how accurate the beginning of his life is portrayed, the end is total fiction. Cops didn't shoot him. He tried to rob a convenience store. In the process he shot the owner in the arm, the owner returned fire and hit him in the chest and face. There was never any question about burying him in Arlington either, he was buried there 6 days after he died.
@@billjones3382 Also one thing that Chapin does not mention is that, in the course of his heroic stand, Dwight Johnson also took time to take wounded comrades to safety and save their lives. He was not that one-note machine of destruction that the climax of the song describes. Still, this is a magnificent song.
@@fabiopaolobarbieri2286 I agree it is, most everything Chapin did was magnificent. My point is, people shouldn't get their history lessons in history from pop culture.
It would be so nice, great to have a story with this song or paper clippings. It wiuld make a great movie.
That's what I was thinking with the sergeant in a sub plot is a bad cop.
Wow
Harry was so ahead of his time totally uncompromising, nakedly honest and totally politically incorrect but that's his genius
My daughter started playing the Chaminade on the flute and it starts with the notes as this...
i remember a Medal of Honor vet who was killed in a robbery
Harry Chaplin does Isaac Hayes😂😂
Is this song based off someone?
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dwight_H._Johnson
Thanks for the info.!!!
@@onealisaac5437 Chapin has rather flattened the character of his protagonist, which I think is why he never uses his name. There were different views about Johnson, including army colleagues who certainly did not see him as the thug of the song. Chapin was interested in the tragedy almost as an abstract truth about the destiny of certain people.