James Joseph Croce (/ˈkroʊtʃiː/;[1] January 10, 1943 – September 20, 1973) was an American folk and rock singer-songwriter. Between 1966 and 1973, he released five studio albums and numerous singles. During this period, Croce took a series of odd jobs to pay bills while he continued to write, record and perform concerts. After Croce formed a partnership with the songwriter and guitarist Maury Muehleisen in the early 1970s, his fortunes turned. Croce's breakthrough came in 1972, when his third album, You Don't Mess Around with Jim, produced three charting singles, including "Time in a Bottle", which reached No. 1 after Croce died. The follow-up album Life and Times included the song "Bad, Bad Leroy Brown", Croce's only No. 1 hit during his lifetime.
On September 20, 1973, at the height of his popularity and the day before the lead single to his fifth album, I Got a Name, was released, Croce, Muehleisen, and four others died in a plane crash. His music continued to chart throughout the 1970s following his death. Croce's widow and early songwriting partner, Ingrid, continued to write and record after his death. Their son, A. J. Croce, became a singer-songwriter in the 1990s.
Early life and education
Croce was born on January 10, 1943 (although some sources say 1942),[2][3] in South Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to James Albert Croce and Flora Mary (Babusci) Croce, Italian Americans whose parents had emigrated from Trasacco and Balsorano in Abruzzo and Palermo in Sicily.[4][5]
Croce grew up in Upper Darby Township, Pennsylvania, seven miles west of Philadelphia, and attended Upper Darby High School, where he graduated in 1960. He then attended Malvern Preparatory School for a year prior to enrolling at Villanova University, where he majored in psychology and minored in German.[6][7] He was a member of the campus singing groups the Villanova Singers and the Villanova Spires. When the Spires performed off campus or made recordings, they were known as The Coventry Lads.[8] Croce was also a student disc jockey at WKVU, which has since become WXVU.[9][10][11] In 1965, he graduated from Villanova with a Bachelor of Science in Social Studies degree.
Career
Early career
Croce did not take music seriously until he studied at Villanova, where he became a leader of the Villanova Singers,[12] formed bands, and performed at fraternity parties, coffeehouses, and universities around Philadelphia. He played "anything that the people wanted to hear: blues, rock, a cappella, railroad music ... anything." Croce's band was chosen for a foreign exchange tour of Africa, the Middle East and Yugoslavia. He later said, "We just ate what the people ate, lived in the woods, and played our songs. Of course they didn't speak English over there but if you mean what you're singing, people understand." On November 29, 1963, Croce met his future wife, Ingrid Jacobson, at the Philadelphia Convention Hall during a hootenanny, 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 ($4,695 in 2023 dollars[13]) wedding gift from Croce's parents, who set a condition that the money must be spent to make an album. They hoped that Croce would abandon music after the album failed and use his college education to pursue a more traditional profession.[14] However, the album proved to be a success, with every copy sold.
1960s
Croce married Jacobson in 1966 and converted from Catholicism to Judaism, as his wife was Jewish. They were married in a traditional Jewish ceremony.[15] Croce enlisted in the Army National Guard in New Jersey that same year to avoid being drafted and deployed to Vietnam, and served on active duty for four months, leaving for duty one week after his honeymoon.[16] Croce, who tended to resist authority, endured basic training twice.[17] He said that he would be prepared if "there's ever a war where we have to defend ourselves with mops."
From the mid-1960s to the early 1970s, Croce and his wife performed as a duo. Initially, their performances included songs by artists such as Ian & Sylvia, Gordon Lightfoot, Joan Baez, and Arlo Guthrie, but they eventually began writing their own music. During this time, Croce secured his first long-term gig, at a suburban bar and steakhouse in Lima, Pennsylvania called the Riddle Paddock. Croce's set list covered several genres, including blues, country, rock and roll, and folk.
In 1968, the Croces were encouraged by the record producer Tommy West, a fellow Villanova alumnus, 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. According to Ingrid, over the next two years, they drove more than 300,000 miles (480,000 kilometres),[18] playing small clubs and concerts on the college concert circuit to promote their album Jim & Ingrid Croce.
Becoming disillusioned by the music business and New York, they sold all but one guitar to pay the rent and returned to the Pennsylvania countryside, settling in an old farm in Lyndell, where he played for $25 a night ($196 in 2023 dollars[13]). To earn additional money, Croce took odd jobs such as driving trucks, construction work, and teaching guitar while continuing to write songs, often about the characters whom he would meet at local bars and truck stops and his experiences at work. These songs included "Big Wheel" and "Workin' at the Car Wash Blues."[19]
The Croces eventually returned to Philadelphia and Croce decided to be "serious" about becoming a productive member of society. He said: "I'd worked construction crews, and I'd been a welder while I was in college. But I'd rather do other things than get burned." His determination led to a job at Philadelphia R&B AM radio station WHAT, where Croce translated commercials into "soul". "I'd sell airtime to Bronco's Poolroom and then write the spot: 'You wanna be cool, and you wanna shoot pool ... dig it.'"
In 1970, Croce met classically trained pianist-guitarist and singer-songwriter Maury Muehleisen through producer Joe Salviuolo, a friend of Croce's since college. Salviuolo had met Muehleisen when he was teaching at Glassboro State College in New Jersey and brought Croce and Muehleisen together at the production office of Tommy West and Terry Cashman in New York City. Initially, Croce backed Muehleisen on guitar, but gradually their roles reversed, with Muehleisen adding a lead guitar to Croce's music.[citation needed]
When his wife became pregnant, Croce became more determined to make music his profession. He sent a cassette of his new songs to a friend and producer in New York City in the hope that he could secure a record deal. After their son, Adrian James (A.J.), was born in September 1971, Ingrid stayed at home while Croce toured to promote his music.
Croce began touring the United States with Muehleisen, performing in large coffeehouses, on college campuses, and at folk festivals. However, his financial situation remained precarious. The record company had fronted him the money to record, and much of his earnings went to repay the advance. In February 1973, Croce and Muehleisen traveled to Europe, performing in London, Paris, Amsterdam, Monte Carlo, Zurich, and Dublin and receiving encouraging reviews. Croce made television appearances on The Midnight Special, which he cohosted on June 15, and The Helen Reddy Show on July 19. His biggest single, "Bad, Bad Leroy Brown", reached No. 1 on the American charts in July.
From July 16 through August 4, Croce and Muehleisen returned to London and performed on The Old Grey Whistle Test, on which they sang "Lover's Cross" and "Workin' at the Car Wash Blues" from their upcoming album I Got a Name. Croce finished recording the album just a week before his death. While on tour, Croce grew increasingly homesick and decided to take a break from music and settle with Ingrid and A.J. when his Life and Times tour ended.[22][23] In a letter to Ingrid that arrived after his death, Croce told her that he had decided to quit music and wanted to write short stories and movie scripts as a career and withdraw from public life.[6][24]
Death
On the night of Thursday, September 20, 1973, during Croce's Life and Times tour, which had been scheduled for 45 dates, and the day before his ABC single "I Got a Name" was released, Croce and five others were killed when their chartered Beechcraft E18S crashed into a tree shortly after takeoff from the Natchitoches Regional Airport in Natchitoches, Louisiana.[25] Croce was 30 years old. Others killed in the crash were the pilot, Robert N. Elliott; Croce's bandmate Maury Muehleisen; the manager and booking agent Kenneth D. Cortese; the road manager Dennis Rast; and George Stevens, a comedian.[26][27][28] An hour before the crash, Croce had completed a concert at Northwestern State University's Prather Coliseum in Natchitoches. He was flying to Sherman, Texas, for a concert at Austin College.
An investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) identified the probable cause as the pilot's failure to see the obstruction because of physical impairment and fog that had reduced his vision. The 57-year-old Elliott 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 airplane.[29] A later investigation placed the sole blame on pilot error resulting from disorientation following his downwind takeoff into a black hole approach illusion.[30]
While ABC had not originally released the song "Time in a Bottle" as a single, Croce's untimely death lent its lyrics, dealing with mortality and the wish to have more time, an additional resonance. The song subsequently received a large amount of airplay as an album track, and demand for a single release built. When it was eventually issued as one, it became Croce's second and final No. 1 hit.[33] After the single had finished its two-week run at the top in early January 1974, the album You Don't Mess Around with Jim became No. 1 for five weeks.[34] After seven weeks of its release, I Got a Name reached No. 2 behind You Don't Mess Around with Jim.[35][36]
Queen's 1974 album Sheer Heart Attack included the song "Bring Back That Leroy Brown"; its title and lyrics reference Croce's "Bad, Bad Leroy Brown".
In 2012, Ingrid Croce published a memoir about Croce entitled I Got a Name: The Jim Croce Story.[38]
In 1985, Ingrid Croce opened Croce's Restaurant & Jazz Bar, a project she had jokingly discussed with Croce, in the historic Gaslamp Quarter in downtown San Diego. She owned and managed it until its closure on December 31, 2013. In December 2013, Ingrid Croce opened another restaurant, Croce's Park West, on 5th Avenue in the Bankers Hill neighborhood near Balboa Park. She closed it in January 2016.[39][40]
^Kening, Dan; O'Shea, David; Paris, Jay (1991). Too Young to Die. Publications International, Ltd. p. 37. ISBN978-0-88176-932-6. Retrieved August 19, 2011.
^"James Joseph Croce". Geni.com. January 10, 1943. James Albert Croce son of Pasquale Anthony Croce born May 14, 1888, in Trasacco (Abruzzo) and Carmella Croce born June 24, 1894, in Palermo (Sicily). Flora Mary Croce (Babusci) daughter of Massimo Babusci born August 13, 1884, in Trasacco (Abruzzo), and Bernice Babusci (Ippolito or Ippoliti) born circa 1888 in Balsorano (Abruzzo).
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