Jim Croce

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James Joseph Croce (January 10, 1943 – September 20, 1973), popularly known as Jim Croce, was an American singer-songwriter. Croce was born into a Catholic family, but converted to Judaism upon his marriage to the former Ingrid Jacobson. He graduated on June 9, 1960 from Upper Darby High School in Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania. In 1976 he was the first former student to be added to the high school's Wall of Fame.

While attending Villanova University ('65 graduate) Croce became very interested in music. He formed a number of college bands and performed at coffeehouses with his future wife Ingrid. Their repetoire included songs by Ian and Sylvia, Gordon Lightfoot, Joan Baez, and Woody Guthrie. Croce got his first longterm gig at a rural bar and steak house in Lima, Pennsylvania, called the Riddle Paddock. Over the next several years he developed a very engaging rapport with tough audiences, and was persuaded to move to New York City in late 1968 to pursue his career. But a disatisfaction with that route (due partly to a failed 1969 release with Ingrid) led him to leave New York City in October 1970 and move to the country (Lyndell, Pennsylvania).

There he met a person to become crucial to his sound: guitarist Maury Muehleisen. Initially, Croce backed up Muehleisen's own failed solo effort, but then Mueheisen moved in with the Croces and concentrated on adding his classically-tinged counter-melodies to Croce's new songs. By February 1971 they had already developed arrangements which would make them famous.

Croce signed to ABC Records in 1972, releasing You Don't Mess Around With Jim and Life & Times that year. The singles "You Don't Mess Around with Jim", "Operator (That's Not the Way It Feels)" and "Time In A Bottle" (written for his newborn son, A.J. who is now an accomplished musician and songwriter in his own right) helped the former album reach #1 on the charts in 1974. His biggest single was "Bad, Bad Leroy Brown", which hit number 1 in the US charts in the summer of 1973, selling two million copies.

Croce died in a plane crash on September 20 1973 in Natchitoches, Louisiana, one day before releasing the third ABC album, I Got a Name. The plane crashed after the pilot reportedly suffered a massive heart attack in mid-air. The posthumous release included three hits, "I Got a Name," "Workin' at the Car Wash Blues" and "I'll Have to Say I Love You in a Song". Several releases since have sold moderately well. Croce was interred in the Haym Saloman Memorial Park cemetery in Frazer, Pennsylvania.

In recent years, his widow, Ingrid, has obtained the rights for all of his songs, many of which she claims she wrote with him and was illegally denied credit at the time of original release. (Producers Tommy West and Terry Cashman deny Ingrid's allegation.) Since then, she has allowed a PBS special to be made from archive footage as well as footage from the Croce family collection, in order to, in her words, "keep his legacy alive". A memorable July 1973 taping for the Old Grey Whistle Test recently resurfaced on the 2003 DVD "Have You Heard - Jim Croce Live", which also shows him singing "Song For A Winter's Night" by Gordon Lightfoot, a Canadian writer he particularily admired. Croce himself is influential among many musicians including for example Tenacious D whose 2001 song "Fuck Her Gently" is a humourously twisted nod to "I'll Have to Say I Love You in a Song".

His wife now operates "Croces" restaurant in San Diego, in honor of Jim.

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