Obit
James Forbes Chapin, a renowned musician and drumming instructor who left a musical legacy to his children and grandchildren, died in Fort Myers, Fla., on July 4, 2009. He was 89 years old.

    Mr. Chapin and his wife, Mary (Monja) Kulczycki Chapin, lived on Elizabeth Street in Sag Harbor for many years. She died in 2003 shortly after their 50th wedding anniversary
    
    Mr. Chapin once told The East Hampton Star that “playing music is pure physical pleasure.” His career as a drummer, bandleader, and teacher spanned seven decades.

    Perhaps best known as an instructor, he traveled the world to instruct students in “coordinated independence,” a technique he created. He also saw students on the East End regularly.

    His 1948 book, “Advanced Techniques for the Modern Drummer,” continues to be one of the best-selling drum instruction publications in the world. In 1971, he published a second volume, and he was working on the third at the time of his death.
 
    As a jazz musician, he played with Tommy Dorsey, Tony Pastor, Woody Herman, and Glen Gray and the Casa Loma Orchestra. In the 1950s, he had a regular gig at Birdland, the famous jazz club in New York City. Shortly after taking up the drums as a teenager, he performed with Gene Krupa at the 1939-40 World’s Fair in Flushing.

    Mr. Chapin was the father of 10 children with three different women. In 1940, he married Jeanne Elspeth Burke, his childhood sweetheart. The couple had four sons and divorced in 1948. In the 1950s, he had a relationship with Shirley Frazier, with whom he had two daughters. He had four more children with Ms. Kulczycki Chapin, a Sag Harbor native whom he married in 1953.

    In the 1960s, Mr. Chapin toured with his sons Stephen, Thomas, and Harry in a folk band called the Chapin Brothers. Harry Chapin, who died in 1981, was an international success who wrote “Cat’s in the Cradle,” and “Taxi.” He was also a philanthropist whose mission was to eliminate hunger, and to that end he helped to create World Hunger Year and Island Harvest. Thomas Chapin later starred in a children’s television show, “Make a Wish.”

    Most of Mr. Chapin’s children and many of his grandchildren are musicians, including three granddaughters who made a recent appearance on the Jimmy Fallon show as “The Chapin Sisters.”
    A descendant of Deacon Samuel Chapin, who came to America in 1638 and helped to establish Springfield, Mass., Mr. Chapin was born on July 23, 1919, in New York City. His father, James Ormsbee Chapin, was a painter, and his mother, Abigail Beal Forbes Chapin, was an English teacher. His parents separated shortly after his birth, and he was raised in Morningside Heights in Manhattan by his aunt, Ina Forbes, his grandmother, Arabelle Beal Forbes, and his mother.
    He graduated from the Horace Mann School. His family was well off enough during the Depression to take trips to Europe. He flunked out of Bard College after a semester, and had a similar experience at William and Mary College in Virginia. At around that time he discovered the drums, and he spent most of his waking hours practicing, at first on a borrowed set.

    Drafted into the Army in 1943, he was stationed in North Carolina. Besides a few years spent there, he lived in Manhattan until moving to Sag Harbor in 1971. There, he was a regular at the Sag Harbor Golf Course, where he played well into his 80s. He also fished in salt and fresh water. Mr. Chapin spent the last six years of his life in Florida.

    He was predeceased by another son, James Burke Chapin, in 2002. His surviving children are Thomas Forbes Chapin of Piermont, N.Y., Stephen Beal Chapin of Andover, N.J., Carol Dana Chapin of New York City, Gale Angelique Chapin of Florida, Paul Anthony Chapin of East Hampton, and Lisa Joan, David John, and Christopher Chapin, all of Sag Harbor.