In 1971 and 1972, a Connecticut native and amateur baritone, Martin Tubridy, rented no less than Carnegie Hall to perform a selection of songs. A popular singer in his hometown, Tubridy hoped to make a name for himself with these two shows. The New York Times were unimpressed, and their brief review doesn't exactly mince words:
"Martin Tubridy, a bass baritone who came to Town Hall on Tuesday night to give his second New York recital, performed songs by Beethoven, Schubert, Vaughan Williams, Britten and others. He was accompanied on the piano by Mitchell Andrews. Mr. Tubridy's voice seemed quite limited in amplitude, range and flexibility, and it was probably because of this that his interpretations lacked force and strong communicative power. He was well prepared and sang conscientiously, but the results were not up to generally accepted levels of professional accomplishment."
That might well have been that, except that Harry Chapin saw that review. Always a champion of the underdog, and consistently interested in ideas about success and talent, recognition and failure, Harry set about transforming the story into song.
The result was Mr. Tanner, the seventh track on Harry's 1973 album Short Stories. Parts of the review were quoted almost verbatim, but elsewhere Harry made creative changes - Tubridy became Tanner, a cleaner from Dayton, Ohio. Over the chorus, Harry had longtime associate Big John Wallace sing the chorus to O Holy Night in his rich baritone.
The song struck a chord, and became a popular staple in Harry's live repertoire, appearing on his 1976 live album Greatest Stories Live. The message - of the importance of passion, of a love for music over great success, or even great talent - was common to Harry's later work and made the song popular with fans.
The song's figure is disillusioned by the harsh reception his concert receives, and vows never to sing publicly again, saving his singing for private moments alone. Happily, the real Tubridy continued to perform locally. He was not, however, aware of the song, or of his connection to it, until at least twenty years later, by which time Harry was dead. It was John Wallace himself who revealed the story in an interview, and once people had tracked down the real Mr. Tanner, Tubridy began to get phonecalls asking for his opinion. Initially he wasn't impressed:
"I knew about this, but just wanted to push it out of the back of my life,” Tubridy said. “Only when Howie Fields called did I realize what it means to people.”
Fields, drummer for the surviving Chapin brothers, approached Tubridy with the idea of getting him onstage to perform the vocal part Wallace had originally sung. In 2016 he relented, and at a fundraiser for the Harry Chapin foundation, took to the stage and finally sang I Holy Night - the real Mr. Tanner performing the song written about him some forty years earlier. Appropriately, Harry's lyrics were tweaked ever so slightly: the ending lyrics of "He did not know how well he sang, it just made him whole" finally becoming "it just made me whole".