Remembering James Joseph Jim Croce (/ˈkroʊtʃi/; January 10, 1943 – September 20, 1973) was an American singer-songwriter. Between 1966 and 1973, Croce released five studio albums and 11 singles. His singles Bad, Bad Leroy Brown and Time in a Bottle were both number one hits on the Billboard Hot 100 charts. Early life Croce was born in South Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on January 10, 1943, to James Albert and Flora Mary Babucci Croce, and grew up in an Italian American family.[2] Croce took a strong interest in music at a young age. At five, he learned to play his first song on the accordion, Lady of Spain. Croce attended Upper Darby High School in Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania. After his graduation in 1960, Croce went to Malvern Preparatory School for one year before deciding to enroll at Villanova University in 1961. During his time as a student, Croce became a member of the Villanova Singers and the Spires. When the Spires performed off-campus gigs or made professional recordings, it was under the name, The Coventry Lads.[3] Jim was also a student disc jockey at WKVU.[4][5] Career Early career Croce did not take music seriously other than as a hobby until his time at Villanova, where he formed various bands, performing at fraternity parties, coffee houses, and at universities around Philadelphia, playing anything that the people wanted to hear: blues, rock, a cappella, railroad music... anything. One of those bands was chosen for a foreign exchange tour of Africa and the Middle East. Croce later said of the experience that, we just ate what the people ate, lived in the woods, and played our songs. Of course they didnt speak English over there but if you mean what youre singing, people understand. Croce met his future wife Ingrid Jacobson at this time during a hootenanny at Philadelphia Convention Hall where he was judging a contest. Croce released his first album, Facets, in 1966, with 500 copies pressed. The album had been financed with a $500 wedding gift from Croces parents, who set a condition that the money must be spent to make an album. They hoped that he would give up music after the album failed, and use his college education to pursue a respectable profession.[6] However, the album proved a success, with every last copy sold. 1960s From the mid-1960s to early 1970s, Croce performed with his wife as a duo. At first, their performances included songs by artists such as Ian and Sylvia, Gordon Lightfoot, Joan Baez, and Woody Guthrie, but in time, they began writing their own music. During this time, Croce got his first long-term gig at a rural bar and steak house in Lima, Pennsylvania, called The Riddle Paddock. His set list included every genre from blues to country to rock n roll to folk. In 1968, Jim and Ingrid Croce were encouraged by record producer Tommy West to move to New York City. The couple spent time in the Kingsbridge section of the Bronx and recorded their first album with Capitol Records. During the next two years, they drove more than 300,000 miles,[7] playing small clubs and concerts on the college concert circuit promoting their album Jim & Ingrid Croce. Becoming disillusioned by the music business specifically and New York City in general, they sold all but one guitar to pay the rent and returned to the Pennsylvania countryside where Jim got a job driving trucks and doing construction to pay the bills while continuing to write songs, often about the characters he would meet at the local bars and truck stops, and his experiences at work; these provided the material for such songs as “Big Wheels” and “Workin at the Car Wash Blues”. 1970s The couple returned to Philadelphia and Jim decided to be serious about becoming a productive member of society. But it was hard to make a living playing in a band, and his previous employment experiences had lost their appeal. Id worked construction crews, and Id been a welder while I was in college. But Id rather do other things than get burned, he would later say. His determination to be serious led to a job at a Philadelphia R&B AM radio station, WHAT, where he translated commercials into soul. Id sell airtime to Broncos Poolroom and then write the spot: You wanna be cool, and you wanna shoot pool... dig it. Increasingly frustrated, he quit to teach guitar at a summer camp and enlisted in the U.S. Army. He did not have a very illustrious enlistment but said he would be prepared if theres ever a war where we have to defend ourselves with mops. In 1970, Croce met the classically trained pianist/guitarist and singer-songwriter Maury Muehleisen from Trenton, New Jersey through producer Joe Salviuolo (aka Sal Joseph). Salviuolo had been friends with Croce when they attended Villanova University together, and Salviuolo later discovered Muehleisen when he was teaching at Glassboro State College in New Jersey. Salviuolo brought the Croce and Muehleisen duo together at the production office of Tommy West and Terry Cashman in New York City. Initially, Croce backed Muehleisen on guitar at his gigs but in time their roles reversed, with Muehleisen adding lead guitar to Croces down-to-earth music. In 1972, Croce signed to a three-record deal with ABC Records and released two albums, You Dont Mess Around with Jim and Life and Times. The singles You Dont Mess Around with Jim, Operator (Thats Not the Way It Feels), and Time in a Bottle (written for his then-unborn son, A. J. Croce) all received airplay. Croces biggest single, Bad, Bad Leroy Brown, hit No. 1 on the American charts in July 1973. That year, the Croces relocated to San Diego, California. Death On Thursday, September 20, 1973, the day that his ABC single I Got a Name was released, Croce, Muehleisen, and four others were killed in the crash of a chartered Beechcraft E18S upon takeoff from the Natchitoches Regional Airport in Natchitoches, Louisiana.[8] Croce had just completed a concert at Northwestern State Universitys Prather Coliseum in Natchitoches and was flying to Sherman, Texas, for a concert at Austin College, when the plane crashed about an hour after the end of the concert. According to results of an investigation, upon takeoff, the plane did not gain enough altitude to clear, and the pilot (Robert Elliot) did not maneuver to avoid a pecan tree at the end of the runway, which investigators said was the only tree for hundreds of yards. The flight conditions were reported as dark, clear sky, calm winds, and over five miles of visibility with haze. The official report from the NTSB[9] lists the probable cause as pilot failure to see and avoid objects or obstructions with factors of pilot physical impairment and fog obstructing vision. The report remarks that the 57-year-old charter pilot suffered from severe coronary artery disease and had just run about three miles to the airport from a motel. The pilot had an ATP Certificate, 14,290 hours total flight time and 2,190 hours in the Beech 18 type.[9] A later investigation, source unknown, placed sole blame for the accident on pilot error due to his downwind takeoff into a black hole.[10] Croce is buried at Haym Salomon Cemetery in Malvern, Pennsylvania.[11] Muehleisen is buried at Saint Marys Cemetery in Trenton, New Jersey.[12] Legacy The album I Got a Name was released on December 1, 1973.[13] Croce had finished recording the album just over a week before his death.[14] The posthumous release included three hits: Workin at the Car Wash Blues, Ill Have to Say I Love You in a Song, and the title song, which had been used as the theme to the film The Last American Hero which was released two months prior to his death. The album reached No. 2 and Ill Have to Say I Love You in a Song reached No. 9 on the singles chart. The song Time in a Bottle had been featured over the opening and closing credits and during a scene in which Desi Arnaz Jr. is opening the You Dont Mess Around With Jim album in the ABC made-for-television movie She Lives!, which aired on September 12, 1973.[15] That appearance had generated significant interest in Croce and his music in the week just prior to the plane crash. That, combined with the news of the death of the singer, sparked a renewed interest in Croces previous albums. Consequently, three months later, Time in a Bottle, originally released on Croces first album the year before, hit number-one on December 29, 1973, the third posthumous chart-topping song of the rock era following Otis Reddings (Sittin On) The Dock of the Bay and Janis Joplins recording of Me and Bobby McGee. The song I Got a Name features on the Soundtrack of Quentin Tarantinos Django Unchained and Disneys Invincible. A greatest hits package entitled Photographs & Memories, released in 1974, proved to be extraordinarily popular. Later posthumous releases have included Home Recordings: Americana, Facets, Jim Croce: Classic Hits, Down the Highway, and DVD and CD releases of Croces television performances, Have You Heard: Jim Croce Live. In 1990, Croce was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame.[16] The Croces son Adrian James (born September 28, 1971) is now an accomplished singer-songwriter, musician, and pianist, and owns/operates his own record label, Seedling Records.[17] Mrs. Croce owns and manages Croces Restaurant & Jazz Bar—a project she and Jim had jokingly discussed a decade earlier—in the historic Gaslamp Quarter in downtown San Diego.[18] She opened the business in 1985. On July 3, 2012, Mrs. Croce published a memoir about her late husband, entitled I Got a Name: The Jim Croce Story.[19] Read more: answers/topic/jim-croce#ixzz3DrlDTVBH
Posted on: Sat, 20 Sep 2014 14:27:56 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015