Jim Croce

In the archives that is music, there are artists that die way ahead before their time and sad to say a few of them died in airplane crashes.  Who knows what would have happened had Buddy Holly or Richie Valens never chose to take a plane to get out of a bad winter in Iowa.  Or where Ronnie Van Zant would have taken Skynyrd after Street Survivors.  Jim Croce was on his way to big stardom when a plane crash took him away from us in 1973.

There are 10 times many more best ofs from Jim Croce than actual albums but he did record a couple albums that didn't sell with his wife Ingrid, Pickwick issued a truncated version of his album which whoever heard it compared Jim and Ingrid to Ian And Sylvia, pleasant folk rock but nothing more.

Croce was the ultimate blue collar working man, working for many jobs while trying to make it in the music business and a chance contract with ABC gave him a top ten hit with You Don't Mess Around With Jim, a interesting account of pool hustlers and Willie McCoy aka Slim declaring revenge on Big Jim Walker, pool shooting sun of a gun.  In some ways an East Coast answer to Tom Waits, Croce's songs were a bit more accessible and better sung than the gravel pit voice of Waits but Croce could be as melancholy as Waits.  The single Operator (that's not the way it feels) to me tells a story of a guy trying to reconnect with an old ex girlfriend and enlists a operator to help him place a call and then saying the hell with it.  That too hit the top ten here but Croce would top the charts with another bar hustler tune set to a barrellhouse piano boogie woogie tune called Bad Bad Leroy Brown  to which the storyline is kinda like You Don't Mess Around With Jim but this time out it's shooting dice.  And maybe he didn't intended it, It Doesn't Have To Be That Way is heard a lot more often during Christmas Time.

A posthumous release I Got A Name issued late 1973 ends the story there.  Beginning with the title track which he didn't write himself, the album is perhaps his most introspective.  I Have To Say I Love You In A Song is one of my favorite love songs ever but also Croce could write an anti love song, Lover's Cross comes to mind.  Even though it was left off the best ofs, the revisiting of Age can touch the heart as well.  The record kinda drags at the end of side two (The ho hum Salon And Saloon and Thursday both on the best ofs) but since Croce wasn't around to finish the album I'm sure ABC was looking for outtakes that they could use.

Outside of The Doors, record labels have continue to put out Best ofs after best ofs and perhaps the best overview was Rhino finally putting both Time In A Bottle and Photographs And Memories into the Classic Hits in 2004.  Lifesong scraped the bottom of the barrel for the uneven The Places I've Been in 1976 and a 45 of Chain Gang Medley was released and made it to number 63 on the Billboard chart.  But it seems that every major label has had a hand in putting out Croce's best ofs.  ABC had the original best of, then Lifesong got distribution from CBS/Sony and Croce's albums came out on Lifesong/CBS in the 70s.  Later on 21 Records (later Saja) via Atlantic put out the 2 best ofs at that time and even EMI managed to put out a couple of their own (and Croce didn't live to see that). Which you cannot go wrong but The CEMA/EMI best of has more filler songs and less hits but it does have Age on it.  And Sanctuary (now part of Universal) has put out best ofs as imports abroad, so basically Croce get credit for recording all of the major labels, post death that is.

In 2006 thereabouts, Shout Factory reissued the early Jim And Ingrid Croce albums but also a live album Have You Heard Jim Croce Live which Croce with his right hand man Maury Muehelisen  in tow and they give a intimate performance. Worth seeking out on either DVD or CD.  But there wasn't much live TV stuff from Croce outside seeing him on one show (I think it was The Midnight Special but not too sure). Americana, is Jim and a tape recorder playing old cover songs. Not bad but not essential either.

Nevertheless had he lived Jim Croce could have had a career something like Gordon Lightfoot since both were basically folk rock artists. Or a less pretentious Bruce Springsteen, since Bruce kinda wrote along the same lines. He made classic singles and very good albums in his year stint with ABC and his tragic passing elevates him to the stature of Buddy Holly and Richie Valens, cut down before their prime.  Any best of will do for you but somewhere in oldies and classic rock land Bad Bad Leroy Brown is playing and soft rock Time In A Bottle.  To which the words ring truthfully that there's never enough time whatever you do. 

And he was right.

The Albums:

Facets (Shout Factory 1966)  B+
Croce  (Capitol/One Way Records 1969) B
You Don't Mess Around With Jim (ABC 1973) A-
Life And Times (ABC 1973) B+
I Got A Name (ABC 1974) B+
The Places I've Been (Lifesong 1976) B-
Photographs And Memories (Lifesong 1978) B+
Time In A Bottle-Greatest Ballads (Saja/Atlantic 1985) B+
Home Recordings-Americana (Shout Factory 2004) B
Classic Hits (Rhino 2004) A-
Have You Heard Jim Croce Live (Shout Factory 2006) A-

Certainly there's more Jim Croce Best of's there's are the notables.

Down The Highway (Saja/Atlantic)
The 50th Anniversary Collection (Saja 1992)
Bad Bad Leroy Brown And Other Favorites (Cema 1994)
VH1 Behind The Music Collection (Rhino 2001)
Live The Final Tour (Saja/Edsel 2012)
The Way We Used To Be: The Anthology (Sanctuary)