Jim Croce

Jim Croce [ dʒɪm ˈkɹoʊtʃi ] (born  January 10, 1943 in Philadelphia , Pennsylvania , †  September 20, 1973 in Natchitoches , Louisiana ; as James Joseph Croce ) was an American singer-songwriter . He released five studio albums and eleven singles from 1966 to 1973, of which Time in a Bottle and Bad Bad Leroy Brown reached # 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 . Jim Croce died in a plane crash at the age of 30.

Life

Youth and education

Jim Croce was born on January 10, 1943 in Philadelphia , Pennsylvania to parents of Italian descent James Albert Croce and Flora Mary (Babucci) Croce. He became interested in music from an early age. At the age of five he began to play the accordion , according to his own statements with moderate success . When he was eighteen he made his first experiences with the guitar ; soon afterwards he began to write his first songs.

In 1960 he graduated from Upper Darby High School in Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania, after which he worked for three years with a stage construction team and spent some time in the military . He also started at the Villanova University in Radnor Township , a psychology -Studies, which he completed 1965th He then worked for some time as a teacher at a junior high school in southern Philadelphia.

In Philadelphia, Croce met Ingrid Jacobson; when he married her in 1966, he converted to Judaism .

Early career

Even when he was in college, Croce played in his first bands, which appeared in coffeehouses and universities, among other places. At Villanova University he worked as a disc jockey for the university's own radio station and continued to play in various music groups that presented music from blues to rock music to Railroad . With one of these groups there was even a trip to Africa and the Middle East . From the mid-sixties he also performed with his wife. As a duo, they initially played music by Ian and Sylvia , Gordon Lightfoot , Joan Baez and Woody Guthrie , but then increasingly also composed their own. At the same time, Croce got his first long-term job at a steak house in Lima, Pennsylvania.

In 1966 he composed the music for the TV documentary Miner's Story , which was awarded an Emmy .

In 1968 the couple moved to New York City , where the album Jim & Ingrid Croce was produced by Tommy West and Terry Cashman . Over the next two years, the two promoted their music with numerous concerts in small clubs, but the album became a commercial failure. Disappointed with their experiences in the music business and New York, they returned to Pennsylvania in 1970, where Croce earned a living as a truck driver and construction worker. Meanwhile he continued to compose and sang a few background passages in New York studios.

success

In 1970, on the initiative of producer and mutual acquaintance Joe Salviuolo, Croce met the pianist and guitarist Maury Muehleisen. At the beginning, Croce accompanied Muehleisen at his concerts, but over time the roles were reversed.

Adrian James Croce , to whom Time in a Bottle is dedicated, was born in September 1971 .

The following year, Croce signed a contract with ABC Records and recorded the album You Don't Mess Around with Jim , which was a resounding success and reached number 1 on the US album charts. The decoupled singles, the title song and Operator , also achieved high placements. In the following years he completed numerous television appearances and concerts. In the middle of the following year, the second album Life and Times was released , which at times took number 7 in the US album charts. The single Bad, Bad Leroy Brown reached number 1.

In August 1973 the family moved to San Diego .

death

On September 20, 1973, one day before the release of his fifth album I Got a Name , 30-year-old Jim Croce arrived with his friend and guitarist Maury Muehleisen, three other passengers and the pilot in a chartered Beechcraft Model 18 plane about life. The flight was supposed to take them from Louisiana to Sherman, Texas, where a concert was planned that evening when the plane brushed treetops and crashed despite a clear view. It was later suggested that the pilot might have had a heart attack.

Croce was buried in Haym Solomon Memorial Park, East Whiteland Township, Chester County, Pennsylvania.

The posthumously released singles Time in a Bottle from the album You Don't Mess Around with Jim and I Got a Name , Workin 'at the Car Wash Blues and I'll Have to Say I Love You in a Song from his fourth album achieved like that The album itself has high placements in the charts.

Several best-of albums were released, and Jim Croce was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1990.

Posthumously, Croce became known to a younger audience in 2012, his song I Got A Name was part of the soundtrack of the Quentin Tarantino film Django Unchained .

His son Adrian James Croce is now a successful singer-songwriter in the piano blues and folk field .

Trivia

The glam metal band Poison recorded a cover version of the song You Don't Mess Around with Jim in 2006 , which appeared on the 2007 album Poison'd! has been published.

Discography

Albums

year	title	Top ranking, total weeks, awardChart placementsChart placements (Year, title, rankings, weeks, awards, notes)		Remarks
		DE	US
1972	You don't mess around with Jim	-	US1 gold (93 weeks)US
1973	Life and Times	-	US7th gold (84 weeks)US
	I got a name	-	US2 gold (53 weeks)US

more publishments

• 1966: Facets
• 1969: Jim & Ingrid Croce

Live albums

• 1989: Jim Croce Live: The Final Tour
• 2006: Have You Heard: Jim Croce Live
• 2013: The Lost Recordings

Compilations

year	title	Top ranking, total weeks, awardChart placementsChart placements (Year, title, rankings, weeks, awards, notes)		Remarks
		DE	US
1974	Photographs & Memories: His Greatest Hits	-	US2 platinum (48 weeks)US
1975	The Faces I've Been	-	US87 (18 weeks) US
1976	Time in a Bottle: Jim Croce's Greatest Love Songs	-	US170 (3 weeks) US
2011	Bad, Bad Leroy Brown & Other Favorites	-	US116 (8 weeks) US

more publishments

• 1975: Greatest Hits
• 1978: Bad, Bad Leroy Brown: Jim Croce's Greatest Character Songs
• 1978: The Legendary Jim Croce
• 1980: Down the Highway
• 1986: Collection (UK:silver)
• 1992: The 50th Anniversary Collection
• 1994: 24 carat gold in a bottle
• 1998: The Best Of Jim Croce
• 1999: Words and Music
• 2000: The Definitive Collection: "Time in a Bottle"
• 2001: VH1 Behind the Music: The Jim Croce Collection
• 2003: Home Recordings: Americana
• 2004: Classic Hits
• 2004: The Way We Used to Be: The Anthology
• 2007: The Very Best of Jim Croce
• 2011: The Original Albums ... Plus
• 2019: An Introduction to: Jim Croce

Singles

year	Title album	Top ranking, total weeks, awardChart placementsChart placements (Year, title, album , rankings, weeks, awards, notes)		Remarks
		DE	US
1972	You Don't Mess Around with Jim You Don't Mess Around with Jim	-	US8 (13 weeks) US
	Operator (That's Not the Way It Feels) You Don't Mess Around with Jim	-	US17 (12 weeks) US
1973	One Less Set of Footsteps Life and Times	-	US37 (10 weeks) US
	Bad, Bad Leroy Brown Life and Times	DE38 (2 weeks) DE	US1 gold (22 weeks)US
	I got a name I got a name	-	US10 (17 weeks) US
	Time in a Bottle You Don't Mess Around with Jim	-	US1 gold (15 weeks)US
	It Doesn't Have to Be That Way Life and Times	-	US64 (5 weeks) US
1974	I'll Have to Say I Love You in a Song I Got a Name	-	US9 (14 weeks) US
	Workin 'at the Car Wash Blues I Got a Name	-	US32 (11 weeks) US
1975	Chain Gang Medley The Faces I've Been	-	US63 (9 weeks) US

more publishments

• 1975: Lover's Cross
• 1976: Mississippi Lady

Web links

• http://www.jimcroce.com (English)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ NTSB Identification: FTW74AF017. NTSB, accessed April 22, 2016 . 
2. ↑ Max Bell2014-04-25T14: 50: 00 114Z Classic Rock: The Story Behind The Song: I Got A Name by Jim Croce. Retrieved May 1, 2019 . 
3. ↑ ^{a b c} Chart sources: DE US