James Joseph Jim Croce (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 US Billboard Hot 100 chart. Croce was born in South Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on January 10, 1943, to James Albert Croce and his wife Flora Mary (née Babucci), both Italian Americans.[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 graduating in 1960, he studied at Malvern Preparatory School for a year before enrolling at Villanova University, where he majored in psychology and minored in German.He graduated with a Bachelor degree in 1965. Croce was a member of the Villanova Singers and the Villanova Spires. When the Spires performed off-campus or made recordings, they were known as The Coventry Lads.Croce was also a student disc jockey at WKVU (which has since become WXVU). On Thursday, September 20, 1973, during Croces Life and Times tour and the day before his ABC single I Got a Name was released, Croce, Muehleisen, and four others were killed when the chartered Beechcraft E18S they were traveling in crashed while taking off from the Natchitoches Regional Airport in Natchitoches, Louisiana. Others who died in the crash were charter pilot Robert N. Elliott, comedian George Stevens, manager and booking agent Kenneth D. Cortose, and road manager Dennis Rast. Jim 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. The plane crashed an hour after the end of the concert. An investigation showed that the plane crashed on takeoff after clipping a pecan tree at the end of the runway. The plane failed to gain enough altitude to clear the tree and did not maneuver to avoid it, even though it was the only tree for hundreds of yards. It was reported as dark, but with clear sky, calm winds, and over five miles of visibility with haze. The report from the NTSB listed the probable cause as the pilots failure to see and avoid obstructions due to pilot physical impairment and fog obstructing vision. The 57-year-old charter pilot suffered from severe coronary artery disease and had run three miles to the airport from a motel. He had an ATP Certificate, 14,290 hours total flight time and 2,190 hours in the Beech 18 type.A later investigation placed sole blame for the accident on pilot error due to his downwind takeoff into a black hole. Jim Croce was buried at Haym Salomon Memorial Park in Frazer, Pennsylvania.
Posted on: Wed, 06 Aug 2014 04:29:48 +0000
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