The songs of Harry Chapin—who is quite possibly the most famous unknown singer in America—are highly deceptive. On paper, they seem about as exciting as transcripts of CB transmissions. Simple rhymes and images wound around your standard pop themes of loneliness and dreams.

Unremarkable stuff, it would seem. But to Joseph Stern, whose production of "Chapin" opens Friday at the Improvisation Theater, staging Chapin's songs in a theatrical-cabaret setting "has really been a fantasy of mine."

Stern is not generally recognized as the wistful dreamer type. In the past few years has had a hand in either producing or co-producing three plays, "Are You Now or Have You Ever Been?", "The Changing Room" and "The Last Meeting of the Knights of the White Magnolia," each of which has contributed to the resurgence of quality and appeal in L.A.'s smaller commercial theater. He's a high-voltage individual who still retains the hard and fast rhythms of New York. A pragmatic man.

Chapin (who isn't in the show) would appear to be temperamentally opposite. At 35, he's earned two gold albums, a gold single, an Academy Award nomination and a couple of Grammy nominations—all of which might point to a commercially aggressive personality, except that most of his work is not played on AM radio and does not seem especially tailored for the helter-skelter world of Top 40 charts.

"He's basically a balladeer in the old tradition," said Stern, who was overseeing a rehearsal at the Improvisation on a recent cold, wet day. "He takes amazingly simple incidents and tells stories and makes it all work.

"A year-and-a-half ago I went to a Broadway play called 'The Night That Made America Famous,' a non-book musical directed by Gene Frankel which featured Chapin's songs. The show wasn't working because it was all crazy lights and whirling dervishes. It was a hype. All wrong. After the performance Chapin came out onstage sat on a stool and played his music simply. He had everybody hypnotized.

"I can't think of any other writer who composes so naturally for the theater. His songs are about specific kinds of people; cleaners, aging disc jockeys, people who want to be ballplayers, blue-collar types. He has great range and his text is usually up to something. A lot of people accuse him of being sentimental, but so is Claude Lelouch, who in my opinion is an equivalent.

"The songs he's probably known best for," said Gary Davis, who co-conceived the production along with Stern and will direct, "are 'Cat's in the Cradle,' 'Taxi' and 'WOLD' (the call signs of a radio station). He's cut seven albums, and the main problem we've had in finding a way to stage them is that after a while they tend to sound the same. We have a cast of five, which is like opening five different windows on the same material. There will be seven songs from the Broadway show and about 15 from the albums. Arranger Frank Denson and I have been working since September to create a musical scenario in which the songs will flow. We're not

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"I'm not sure how to describe Harry Chapin to someone who hasn't heard of him," producer Joe Stern explains over the phone. "He's a story-songwriter, deeply concerned with social and humanitarian issues, a peculiarly American balladeer who writes about the city, sings and records all his own songs and has a following in the 25-30 age group. Ever heard of 'Cat's in the Cradle'? Taxi'?  They're his.  He's cut about seven albums and last year he had a show on Broadway called 'The Night That Made America Famous,' which I saw.  It didn't do well, but I thought there was a special magic to it—and to this guy. I think that what makes him important is that he transcends the record."

Stern, who was one of the producers of "Are You Now or Have You Ever Been" at the Hollywood Center Theater, and later "The Last Meeting of the Knights of the White Magnolia" at the Coronet, was sufficiently impressed to want to put together a Chapin show of his own. So he and Bill Devane, who together produced "The Changing Room" at the Odyssey earlier this year under the banner of their Actors for Themselves, will present "Chapin" Jan. 14 at the Improvisation.

"It's a presentation of 20 to 22 Chapin songs," says Stern, "done in cabaret style. I'm not sure what to call it. It's a nonbook show, so it doesn't come under Equity. It's not a contract show, and it certainly isn't a waiver show."

Whatever it is could resemble "Jacques Brel Is Alive and Well and Living in Paris," though blessed with a much shorter title. The 33-year-old Chapin, who in fact was once known as "the Jacques Brel of Brooklyn Heights," will not personally participate in the production—only his music, which is being arranged by Frank Denson, well remembered for his excellent contributions to musical shows at Occidental College. Gary Davis (also associated with Occidental, the Long Beach Civic Light Opera and the LA-CLO Musical Comedy Workshop) will direct.

The singers are George Ball (of "Jacques Brel"), Scott Jarvis, Wings Houser, Barbara Iley and Jennifer Darling. Russell Pyle is in charge of set design and Ward Carlyle of lighting which, Stern promises, will be elaborate. Ray Col-cord is the musical director.

"People really listen to what you have to say if you treat them intelligently," Chapin had told The Times' Dennis Hunt last year. "If you respect your audience—and I respect mine—you don't have to emphasize everything strongly... What an artist should do is sensitize, not propagandize..."

Twenty-five years ago the average pop song was a jingle about romantic love sung by someone other than the one who wrote it. Today, it is a meditation on almost any subject (love still up there, of course), composed and performed on the same guitar. The vocalist and the composer have merged into the troubadour.

Some of the gains and losses in this can be seen in a new musical entertainment at the Improvisation, "Chapin." It is an evening of Harry Chapin songs, presented in the cabaret-revue style of "Jacques Brel Is Alive and Well and Living in Paris." As with the Brel show, the troubadour isn't himself present, except in his songs.

They are much more personal than pop songs used to be. There are 20 of them in "Chapin." By the end—which wouldn't have applied to a Tin Pan Alley composer of the old school—we can make some good guesses about what Chapin's like as a man.

Quiet, we'd say. Broody. Not very high on energy. Not convinced that his talent is extraordinary (we'd agree). Sometimes rather droll. An unpretentious fellow who keeps plugging and occasionally hits on a good idea.

Good or bad, his songs are clearly from one source, from one way of looking at things, and we respond to that. As one says of an actor, Chapin's songs have a "quality," something that comes through as a genuine manifestation of personality even when the technique is cloudy.

His favorite subject is the man who isn't going anywhere. A taxi driver who wants to fly, but only has grass ("Taxi"). A boss who wants his secretary but will probably stop at taking her put to dinner ("Half-way to Heaven"). You can feel his identification with these people. It's not the big star patronizing the little man. The tongue-tied quality of some of the lyrics almost helps. Like his characters, Chapin is groping to say... something.

The effort behind these songs, their attempt to be meaningful, touches us.

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Two musical shows that have been running for some seven months in town were revisited recently. Both "Chapin" at Budd Friedman's Improvisation (8162 Melrose Ave., 852-0957) with its original cast of five, and "The Great American Backstage Musical," in a new space (the Odyssey, near Santa Monica and Bundy, 826-1626) and with an entirely new company (the original one just opened at San Francisco's Montgomery Playhouse) are continuing extremely strong.

"Chapin" is the real surprise, perhaps because it was this writer's first visit to the show (Times critic Dan Sullivan reviewed it originally). The power and skill of the performances, the glorious voices and much of the Harry Chapin material in concert were unexpectedly rich and resonant." It is an evening that, like "Jacques Brel" at its best, is both exhilarating and haunting. Actor-singers George Ball, Jennifer Darling, Scott Jarvis, Barbara Iley and Sam Weisman .rare interchangeably as gifted vocally as they are dramatically, which lends the show its particularly burnished look.

Each of the performers has his moment. Jarvis, in "WOLD," is immensely touching as a disappointed DJ who mixes silliness and braggadoccio in a clumsy attempt to find out if his ex-wife will take him back (she won't). Iley underscores each line of "You're Still My Boy," making the pain of a lost but unsurrendered love feel like daggers that won't quit.

Ball has great fun with the down-home humor of "Thirty Thousand Pounds of Bananas," and Weisman strikes smartly at the irony of "The Mayor of Candor Lied."