Beth Nielsen Chapman was born on September 14, 1958,[2] in Harlingen, Texas. She is the middle child of five in a Catholic family.[3] Her father was a major in the United States Air Force and her mother was a nurse. While Beth was growing up her family moved several times, settling in Alabama in 1969.[4] While living in Germany, at age 11, Chapman started playing the guitar after her mother hid a Framus guitar as a Father's Day gift for her father in her room.[4][5] She learned to play the piano as well when she started playing the guitar.[6] As a child and teenager, she listened to a variety of music including Hoagy Carmichael, Tony Bennett, James Taylor, and Carole King.[7]
In 1976, Chapman played with a rock and pop group, called "Harmony", in Montgomery, Alabama replacing Tommy Shaw, who had just left to join Styx.[5][8] For the group, she sang and played the acoustic guitar and the piano, performing at the popular bar of a bowling alley, Kegler's Kove. She has returned infrequently to play in the area ever since.[9]
Songwriter
Chapman had several popular songs on the adult contemporary charts in the 1990s like "I Keep Coming Back to You", "Walk My Way", and "All I Have". In 1993, she sang a duet with Paul Carrack, "In the Time It Takes".
A co-songwriter of Faith Hill's hit song "This Kiss", Chapman has written songs performed by many singers, including:
Her son Ernest Chapman III performs with her on "Your Love Stays".
Beth Chapman performed at the 2nd Annual "Women Rock! Girls and Guitars" special on Lifetime, singing backing vocals with Emmylou Harris, performing with the ensemble on a cover version of "Take It to the Limit" and on "There's a Light" with Harris, Pat Benatar, Sheryl Crow, and Shea Seger singing back-up.
In the U.S., Chapman has never made the Hot 100 chart as a recording artist, although she had eight singles on the Billboard Top Adult Contemporary Singles chart. She is tied for first place (with Marilyn Maye) 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 had 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.
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" was BBC Radio 2's "Record of the Week" for the last week of 2009; it 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" beginning on January 18, 2010. The album Liv On was released on October 7, 2016, for digital download and on CD the next week. It has Olivia Newton-John and Amy Sky songs about loss and moving on from grief. Chapman, Newton-John, and Sky toured Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, 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 and as a digital download.
Personal life
Chapman has been widowed twice. Her first husband, Ernest Chapman, died of cancer in 1994. The song "Sand and Water" was written after Ernest's death; Elton John performed it during his 1997 world tour. The song was featured on the episode "Sand and Water" in Season 7 of ER (2000), as well as on the episode "Dead Man Dating" of Charmed (1998).
In 2008, she was engaged to psychologist and photographer Bob Sherman while living in Nashville.[14] The engagement was the inspiration for her album Back to Love.[15] In January 2011, Chapman married Sherman after a decade-long courtship.[16] On December 9, 2022, Bob Sherman died from leukemia. [17]
She has one son, Ernest (born 1981),[18] who is also a musician and has performed with her. In 2000, she battled breast cancer.[19]
