“30,000 Pounds of Bananas” by Harry Chapin
The lyrics of Harry Chapin’s “30,000 Pounds of Bananas” were inspired by the tragic death of a truck driver in the mid 1960s. The driver (Gene Seski) was conveying a lot of bananas in his truck when he got involved in a fatal accident that claimed his life.
The Banana Truck Accident of 1965
On March 26, 1965, a truck driver died while conveying a load of bananas to Scranton, PA. The incident is the inspiration behind Harry Chapin’s song titled 30,000 Pounds of Bananas.
Gene Seski, a 35-year-old truck driver had picked up a huge consignment of fresh bananas from the boat piers at Weehawken, New Jersey. He set off to deliver them to someone in a city in Pennsylvania called Scranton.
In the course of his journey, Gene is reported to have suddenly lost control of his truck. According to reports, this happened while he was heading towards Rt. 307, a two-mile road that extended from Lake Scranton down to Moosic Street. The truck ultimately crashed around the southwest edge of Moosic Street and S. Irving Ave.
At about ninety miles per hour, the truck sideswiped a number of other cars before crashing, killing Gene Seski and spilling the bananas all over the accident scene.
Facts about “30,000 Pounds of Bananas”
The song was composed by Harry Chapin following a truck-carrying-bananas accident that took place in 1965, in Pennsylvania.
He subsequently recorded it at Connecticut Recording Studios, with Paul Leka as the producer.
The song was released in 1974, 9 years after the banana truck accident. It appears on Harry’s “Verities & Balderdash” album, and wasn’t released as a single. Actually the said album didn’t produce any singles.
In the lyrics, Harry states that the truck driver got decapitated. However, in real life, this didn’t happen. Gene, the driver did die. He however, didn’t get decapitated.
This particular song did not win any award, although Harry Chapin had already won the “Best New Artist of the Year” category of the Grammy Awards in 1972 for his track “Taxi”, before releasing “30,000 Pounds of Bananas”.
What genre of music is this song?
The make of this song puts it directly into the folk rock genre/category.
