Beth Nielsen Chapman: wife, mother, hit songwriter, breast cancer survivor.

Posted on October 3, 2011 by bob in Features

Beth Nielsen Chapman with singer/songwriter Vince Gill. (photo by Dan Harr/Admedia)

by Bob Corley

Award-winning singer/songwriter Beth Nielsen Chapman first wrapped her pre-teenage hand around the neck of a guitar while sitting in a closet, flashlight tucked under her chin, struggling to read a chord book written in German.

“There were no books in English,” she says, referring to her time in Germany with her Air Force family.

But Chapman persevered, learned to play guitar and piano by ear, and over the next 40+ years wrote Number One songs for a who’s-who of performers, while her own recordings cracked the Top Ten several times. But this same period also brought two battles with cancer, her husband’s, and her own.

“We will all go through being cracked open by life in some way,” she says. In that process of loss and recovery, Chapman discovered a universal healing element that both unites us, and makes us uniquely individual – creativity.  It is, says Chapman, “…the number one healing activity that anyone can do.”

From the time her family moved to Montgomery and she enrolled in the eighth grade at Cloverdale Jr. High, through her high school years at Jeff Davis, music has been the dominant  creative activity in Chapman’s life.

“I would have been much more miserable (without music). It gave me a channel,” says Chapman. “It was me, awakening as a person. I started writing songs and poems.”

Performing in Montgomery in the 1970s.

She sang in the school choir and competed as a soloist at All State. But not all her performances were positively received, such as playing guitar in the girl’s restroom.

“We’d be singing Judy Collins’ songs. I remember someone coming in and saying they were going to confiscate my guitar,” she says, laughing, “because I was upsetting the typing classes because all the girls were singing (launching into song) ‘Who knows where the time goes, who knows where the time, goes…’”

Church performances were part of her early musical experience, as were weddings and coffee houses that sprang up in Montgomery in the 1970s.  Among them, the Unitarian Fellowship on Vaughn Road, and the Down Funky Street Coffee House at Huntingdon College, where Chapman first performed her own songs.

“I was just about 15,” she recalls. “It was three songs, one of them was (singing) ‘There are tiny open spaces, in our conversation…’ I  just remember feeling like it went over real well. It was that thing where the spark was ignited.”

A spark, indeed. That song, When Love is New, would later be recorded by country music superstar Crystal Gayle.
Soon after high school Chapman signed a recording contract and had a solo album produced. She performed a few years in Montgomery with the popular group Harmony.  A move to Mobile, marriage, and the birth of her son occupied much of her time over the next few years, but she continued performing and writing.

Beth with Elton John (center) after he began performing her song Sand and Water on his tour.

Among songs penned during her time in Mobile was Five Minutes, which became a Number One hit for Lorrie Morgan. After moving to Nashville in 1985 Chapman’s career took a huge leap forward. Over the next few years her songs would be performed by a stellar line-up of artists.

In 1988, Tanya Tucker had a Number One hit with Strong Enough To Bend. The following year Chapman’s Nothing I Can Do About It Now was a Number One hit for Willie Nelson. A year later Chapman’s own album yielded three singles that climbed into the Top Ten, and her1993 album placed two more songs in the Top Ten. But that year, on the heels of success and triumph, her life was ripped apart.

In 1993 her husband Ernest was diagnosed with a rare form of lymphoma. He died a year later.

“We had hope all through it,” she says quietly.

With her dad early in her career performing a novelty song about Ann Boleyn.

In the depths of her pain and despair, music was a constant companion, even if Chapman didn’t fully understand its meaning or power. Not long after her husband’s death, longtime family friend and fellow songwriter Rodney Crowell called to say he was coming over to write. Chapman panicked.

“I felt like I had a gun to my head,” she says, pointing her index finger at her temple.

Crowell had written Number One songs for other artists, and one of his own albums had yielded five Number One hits.

“When he came through the door,” recalls Chapman, “I was telling him, ‘Look, I got this thing started, and we’ve got to fix it, it’s not done.’”

Chapman played the song for Crowell, recalling his reaction as if it were yesterday.

“He said, ‘If you change one word of that you’re crazy. It’s perfect. It’s so done.’”

Chapman, unconvinced, disagreed with the Grammy Award-winning artist.

“It’s got that line about solid stone is just sand and water and a million years gone by,” she argued. “That doesn’t make any sense.”

Lowering her voice, adding a bit more southern twang, Chapman mimics Crowell’s response.

“You’re such a grievin’ widder woman, you don’t even know what you just wrote.”

Crowell was right. Sand and Water was complete.

“I consider it one of the best songs I’ve ever written,” she concedes. “I wrote that whole song in such a state of grace and grief. I think what happens is when you’re really in that vulnerable place, where feeling and art meet, if you can just stay out of the way of the creative spirit…it will flow and heal as it leaves behind beautiful things that help others to heal.”

After the release of Sand and Water in 1997, Sir Elton John added the title track to his concert tour as a tribute to the late Princess Diana.  The next few years yielded Chapman’s greatest hit so far. This Kiss, co-written with Annie Roboff and Robin Lerner, became a Number One song for Faith Hill. This Kiss also won ASCAP’s Song Of The Year Award and was nominated for a Grammy. Chapman was on a creative roll. But in 2000, her life was once again thrown into turmoil.

That year she was diagnosed with breast cancer.

Chapman credits songwriting and other creative pursuits with helping see her through some very tough periods in her life.

“In the middle of it I thought, ‘I’m not going to be able to do this. I’m not doing this very good. I don’t know if I’m going to get through this.’” Chapman, losing her strength along with her hair, drew inspiration from those who had gone through similar trials.

“I’d talk to someone and their hair would be grown out and they’d say ‘Ah, you’re doing great! You’re right where you’re supposed to be.’”

During chemotherapy Chapman’s writing muse was nowhere to be found, yet she didn’t abandon creative pursuits.

“I started painting. Many of them are women with no hair.  And I did a lot of angels.”

Today, Chapman is a strong voice for early detection of breast cancer, often interrupting a concert for what she terms a “public service announcement.”

“Ladies,” she tells concert goers, “it’s a really good idea to have someone feel you up at least once a month. But if you’d rather do it yourself, that’s fine, too.” She grins. “And they’re going ‘Oh, my God I can’t believe she said that!’”

With co-writer Annie Roboff (left) and performer Faith Hill, who took their song This Kiss to Number #1.

“Here’s the deal,” she’ll continue, amid twitters of laughter in the concert hall. “If you find anything, you have to go and have it checked out, not by a regular doctor, not by your dentist, not by your foot doctor, but by a breast surgeon!’ Chapman grins. “I try to bring humor into my very serious message.”

Recently, a young woman in England approached her at the end of a concert and credited Chapman with saving her life. A year before, the 31-year-old had found a lump, but her doctor dismissed it since she didn’t have a history of cancer in her family. After attending one of Chapman’s U.K. concerts she returned to her doctor and insisted on additional tests. Those tests revealed an aggressive cancer in its early stages and she began treatment.

“She’s going to live,” Chapman says, beaming. “That’s all I needed!”

Her most recent reminder of our tentative hold on life was in 2009, with the removal of a non-malignant brain tumor that turned out to be impeding her writing.

“You can look at me and say ‘you’ve been through all this,’” she says. ‘You must really feel unlucky!’”

Just the opposite. Chapman considers herself quite lucky, this year in particular.

In January, after a decade-long courtship, she married Bob Sherman, a psychologist and photographer. Add to that a just-completed CD (chants sung in Sanskrit), a soon-to-be-finished collection of songs about astronomy aimed a school-age children, and a September performance and panel discussion on peace at the U.N. (including meeting U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon), and 2011 ranks high on her list of good years.

“I feel like the luckiest person in the world to have come through this,” she says,referring to the many obstacles that have obstructed her journey to this point.

Chapman in her writing room.

“I’ve come to believe in my own resilience, and that resilience is what I find so comforting to see in other people.”

This resilience, along with perseverance in the face of great odds is, as you might expect, the subject of a Beth Nielsen Chapman song, Life Holds On.

Life holds on
Given the slightest chance
For the weak and the strong
Life holds on.

And herein lies one of the mysteries of the creative spirit, and the gifts it bestows on those who take the time to listen and act on its behalf – Chapman penned the resilent, uplifting message of Life Holds On more than 30 years ago.

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