Beth Nielsen Chapman was born on September 14, 1958, in Harlingen, Texas, as the middle child of five to a Catholic family, an American Air Force Major father and a nurse mother. While Chapman was growing up, her family moved several times and settled in Alabama in 1969. While living in Germany at age 11, Chapman started playing guitar after her mother hid a Framus guitar as a Father's Day gift in her room. She also learned to play the piano at the same time she started playing guitar. As a child and teenager, she listened to a variety of music including Hoagy Carmichael, Tony Bennett, James Taylor and Carole King. In 1976, Chapman played with a rock and pop group called "Harmony" in Montgomery, Alabama, effectively replacing Tommy Shaw who had just left to join Styx. She played acoustic guitar and piano as well as providing vocals for the group in a locally-popular bowling alley bar called Kegler's Kove and has returned to play in the area on an infrequent basis ever since.
In her native country, Chapman has never made the Hot 100 chart as a recording artist, although she charted eight singles on the Billboard Top Adult Contemporary Singles chart. She is tied for first place as the artist with the most charted Adult Contemporary hits without ever reaching the Billboard Hot 100, according to the Billboard Top Adult Contemporary Hits book. Chapman also charted one song on the Billboard Bubbling Under The Hot 100 Chart. "Sand and Water" reached Number 2 on the Bubbling Under chart, a position often listed as No. 102 on the Hot 100 in various Billboard singles books. She is a significantly more successful chart artist in Canada, where she scored three Top 40 hits on the national RPM chart in the early 1990s. Her biggest Canadian hit was "The Moment You Were Mine", which reached #23 in 1993.
Personal life
Chapman's husband, Ernest Chapman, died of cancer in 1994. In 2000, she experienced her own battle with breast cancer. The song "Sand and Water" was written after Ernest's death; Elton John performed this song during his 1997 world tour. The song was featured on the episode "Sand and Water" in Season 7 of ER, as well as in the Season 1 episode "Dead Man Dating" of the TV series Charmed in October 1998. She has one son, Ernest, who is also a musician and has performed with her. In 2008, she got engaged to be married and living in Nashville, Tennessee. This engagement was the inspiration for her album Back to Love. In January 2011, Chapman married psychologist and photographer Bob Sherman, after a decade long courtship.
Recent recordings
Chapman's album, Back to Love, was released in the United Kingdom on January 25, 2010, and in the United States on May 25, 2010. The album contained 11 new compositions. The single "Even As It All Goes By" closed out 2009 as BBC Radio 2's "Record of the Week" and was the only new single added to the "A list" of BBC Radio 2's playlist at the end of 2009. Additionally, Back To Love was BBC Radio 2's "Album of the Week" starting on January 18, 2010. The album Liv On was released on October 7, 2016, for digital download and on CD the following week. It features Olivia Newton-John and Amy Sky in songs about loss and moving on from grief. Chapman, Newton-John and Sky toured across Canada, the U.S., the U.K. and Ireland in 2017 in support of the album, performing mainly in smaller, more intimate venues. Her most recent album, Hearts of Glass, was released in 2018 and is available on CD, as an MP3 download or as a digital download.
Discography
Albums
Singles
Music videos
Contributions
Mother & Child – "Ave Maria"
– "Stoney End"
Song of America – "Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child"
